It's not the first time the Spanish star's loyalties have been torn between animal rights and her compatriots' enthusiasm for bullfighting.

Cruz is known as an active animal rights supporter who doesn't wear fur and whose film contracts carry a clause saying she will not work on a film involving animal cruelty.

In her latest movie, Cruz plays the actress Lupe Sino, with whom the famous matador, played by Adrien Brody, had a affair in the 1940s.

But activists are not happy at her participation in a film that celebrates bullfighting.

"We deplore something that promotes as a hero a man who dedicated his life to killing and torturing bulls, " the Spanish animal rights campaigner Manuel Casas has said.

Cruz prompted outrage among aficionados in 2001 when the mayor of Pamplona complained of receiving a letter from the star, calling for an end to the town's famous bull running festival. It was reported that she had been leaned on by her father, a lover of bullfighting, to deny she'd written such a letter. The actress said she might once have signed an artists' petition against animal cruelty, but she accepted that bull running and bullfights "were part of Spanish culture".