Leave the movie at the bedroom door, say Cannes couples

Hepburn and Tracey, Bogart and Bacall, Joel Coen and Frances McDormand: movie magic often has real-life love stories behind it, but star couples at Cannes say you must tread carefully when mixing work and romance.

Spanish Oscar winners Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, who have replaced Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as the smouldering A-list pair on Cannes' red carpet, have already teamed up on nine movies but said they were in no hurry to rush back to a film set together.

After the premiere of their new thriller, "Everybody Knows", which opened the festival, Cruz said dryly that while she enjoyed working with her husband, she wouldn't want to do it all the time.

"It's not something that we plan on doing every two years."

Cruz said she and Bardem, who have two children, were paid equally for the film and have strict ground rules about leaving the push-and-pull of their personal relationship far from the set.

"It would not make your life better, I think, if you used certain things from your private life (on a film). So the fact that we know each other and trust each other so much only helps," said Cruz.