Penelope Cruz smolders as Esquire's Sexiest Woman Alive 2014

Penelope Cruz's undeniable beauty is no trick.

In fact, the 40-year-old Spanish dream has been named Esquire's Sexiest Woman Alive 2014 and stuns on the magazine's November cover in a neck-plunging black one-piece swimsuit.

Her naturally messy brunette tresses, pouty lips and dramatic eyes are also no joke. The only one she's fooled is herself.

"I've played a lot of tricks on myself," she told the mag.

"I've made it hard for me sometimes, especially in my teens and 20s," Cruz continued. "I had an attraction to drama. Most of us have that, especially if you are an artist -- you feel like you are tempted to explore the darkness."

As a young girl growing up in Madrid, Cruz often lied about her age in order to get into movie theaters to see films by her now mentor, director Pedro Almodóvar, she told Esquire.

"(He is) the biggest source of inspiration," she said.

While she continues working with Almodóvar -- she's already appeared in five of his movies -- Cruz is still willing to challenge herself to explore the dark side in her characters, but offscreen she's no longer attracted to drama.

"I could not be less interested now," she confessed. "For me, the most attractive, charming, cool, fun, interesting thing -- how could I call it? A plan."

Cruz's plans are often a mystery to the public as she lives a uniquely private life, staying out of the limelight and humbly denying herself the right to boast about the title the magazine has given her.

Instead, the mother-of-two with husband Javier Bardem -- the two have a son, Leo, 3, and 1-year-old daughter, Luna -- said she feels more like a mom who doesn't get enough sleep.

While she confessed that her family is the center of her existence, in keeping with her preferred hushed lifestyle, Cruz simply told the mag, "That is for us," when asked about her husband of four years.

However, one thing that Cruz and Bardem, as well as Almodóvar, recently did that made headlines was include themselves in a controversial letter condemning Israeli's bombing of Gaza.

To curb that topic quickly, Cruz merely pointed to the fact that, "My only wish and intention in signing that group letter is the hope that there will be peace."

Cruz will appear next in the Spanish-language film "Ma Ma" and will soon begin filming "Grimsby" with Sacha Baron Cohen, but as with almost every other topic in the cover story, she didn't want to talk about that in detail either.