Recognition and awards come to actors who play crazy and actresses who play hookers.

It’s not a rule written in stone, but think: Tom Hanks in Forest Gump; Geoffrey Rush in Shine; Dustin Hoffman in Rain Main; Peter Finch in Network; Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest; Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman; Jane Fonda in Klute; Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8; Robert DiNero and Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver.

The reverse is rarely true. One of the exceptions that prove the rule is Vivian Leigh who won a Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois’s descent into madness, but then she had the advantage of being insane while Streetcar Named Desire was being filmed.

Spanish actress Pilar López de Ayala plays 16th century Mad Queen Juana, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabela of Spain who sent Christopher Columbus across the ocean blue, in Juana la Loco (released as Mad Love in the United State.)

López de Ayala not only has the beauty of a young Madeline Stowe, but watching her go from young and innocent to crazed with jealous monarch is every bit as emotional as Leigh’s portrayal of former southern belle DuBois.

There is a lot of Leigh in young López de Ayala. But while Leigh’s DuBois says she relies on the kindness of strangers, López de Ayala wonderfully portrayed Queen Juana as a tough and independent woman whose handicapped by her love of husband Philip the Handsome (Daniele Liotti) son of Emperor Maximilian I.

López de Ayala portrayal of Queen Juana is also reminiscence of Katherine Hepburn’s Eleanor of Aquitane in The Lion in Winter, both playing tough rulers, who unfortunately love men not deserving of their affection.

But while Peter O'Toole plays England's Henry II as a worthy, but deceitful adversary of Hepburn's Eleanor, Liotti's Philip never goes beyond a character out of a Harlequin romance.

Maybe that's the point. Beyond his physical beauty and sexual prowess, Philip never demonstrates any reason for Juana's obsession with him. Juana must be insane to be so in love with such a shallow character.

To demonstrate the toughness of Queen Juana, she leaves a court dance to deliver one of her children while sitting on the toilet, biting through the umbilical cord.

But Queen Juana’s toughness is compromised by her love for her husband. And when married to someone called Philip the Handsome, infidelities are going to become an issue.

Director/screenwriter Vicente Aranda, who has previously written and directed a couple dozen Spanish films, does a good job of walking the tightrope between historical facts and creating an interesting drama.

Basing movies on historical incidences is always tough.

Some like The Patriot decide to ignore facts and just use the period as part of the movie. Others, such as A Beautiful Mind, will take real incidences and embellish what they want, disregarding what doesn’t fit their story.

Juana la Loca does a good job with historical incidents it portrays, but chooses to ignore incidences that might lead to conclusions other than the desired conclusions.

Queen Juana’s place in Spanish history has changed over the year and it has been the arts that have instigated the changes.

She was generally considered Mad Queen Juana until a play by Spanish writer Manuel Tamayo y Baus titled Locura de Amor (Madness of Love) in 1855 presented her in a more sympathetic light.

Locura de Amor first proposed that Queen Juana was a victim of love and that impression became generally accepted by the Spanish populace.

In the 20th century Giancario Menotti wrote an opera La Loca (The Mad One) and Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes wrote in the novel Terra Nostra, both proposing Juana as insane, but that her love for Philip drove her to insanity.

Aranda sticks to the victim of love story, downplaying the madness and playing up the love of her husband.

But he never shies away from the madness angle. When her trusted advisers want to discuss issues of state with her she ignores them, only wanting to discuss her husband’s infidelities.

A missed opportunity was not playing up her march to Granada with her dead husband’s coffin so he could be buried beside her mother.

Along the route the procession would stop at every possible church or monastery, holding yet another funeral service for Philip.

At night, she would insist on the coffin being opened so she could again kiss her dead husband goodbye.

One time the party stopped by a convent for nuns that Queen Juana mistakenly thought was a monastery. The Queen insisted they leave immediately as she could not stand the thought of her husband again being surrounded by other women.

They never made it to Granada. The Queen was again declared mad along the way and sent to a castle at Tordesillas, where she remained the rest of her life.

Regardless if the history is true or embellished, López de Ayala is reason enough to see this film. Juana la Loca is her film; she is in almost every frame.

López de Ayala has already won the Goya and Silver Seashell for best Spanish actress in 2001 and it is only a matter of time before she gains similar awards in the U.S. and internationally.