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EN...RIQUISIMO Cristina magazine December 2001   EN…RIQUISIMO - Cristina Magazine If peace could be wrapped up, surely it would come from this gift that Enrique Iglesias and Cristina Saralegui share. And if you had been there with them, you would have witnessed what we tell you here. Long, like the sighs that he causes. As skinny as the pencils used by the fans who pursue him for autographs … For Enrique Iglesias, 26 years old, Spanish and a millionaire, it is better to describe him than to define him. It might be hard to understand how someone who chose to practically live in an airplane is terrified to fly. Or that for someone who wanted to be famous since he was born, his heart rate accelerates when he is confronted with a camera that he knows will multiply his popularity. "How I love pictures!" he said, with irony, while the photographer was trying to put away the only roll of film he was able to shoot of him. And then he repeats in English: " I hate the f….. pictures!" Minutes before, he had posed with Cristina among the Christmas presents and you could see he was having fun. They were playing like they were fighting over one of the presents and they weren’t even posing. In the middle of the laughter, Enrique asked aloud: "Do you really want us to fight?" And he continued pulling the present like when he was a boy and would fight with his siblings, Chabeli (who will soon make him an uncle) and Julio Jose. Accompanied by two people from his record company and with an image much more thought-out than when he launched Bailamos (fewer eyebrows but more hair), Enrique Iglesias taped the Cristina Show as promotion for his new CD, which, according to him, is the one that is the most fun of all the CDs he has recorded. He arrived on time, without arrogance or special requests. He changed in the dressing room and it was rumored that underneath his brown pants he was wearing simple boxers. Cristina asked him about it. "I wear boxers, long ones, briefs, thongs... everything." And he took the opportunity to make fun of himself with regard to the naked image that has been captured on the Internet and which has made many women drool. "If it is big, then yes, that's me", he said with a wicked laugh. Somebody close to him joked that Sofia Vergara gave him bad publicity in that regard and he asked confused: "Did Sofia really say that?" Later, on the air, he confessed: "If I took my clothes off … I would not sell one single record." A Hero Named Julio When one sees him singing, while he makes gestures with his long arms and the microphone becomes tiny in his hands, the story that he no longer tells comes to mind, but one that those who have followed him closely will remember. That as a boy he would pray every night to God that one day he would be a singer. That impossible dream of the boy who had everything, and about which no one knew anything. Perhaps for that reason, today his hero is named Julio Iglesias. "My parents have done a great job raising us. At least, I think so. My father is my hero, and my mother, what I can tell you? She is my mother, each day she’s more intelligent and more beautiful. Hopefully one day I will marry someone just like my mother. His mother, the always elegant Isabel Preysler, caused him to spend some anxious moments on September 11. She was in New York, he was in Miami and his little sister Tamara had just boarded a flight in Newark. "I grew up in this country and it hurts me to see this happening. If there was ever a time I wanted to cry, it was when I participated in the telethon that was organized in North America to help the victims. As it happens, my song 'Hero' was used as a background song with the images of the tragedy, and although in the beginning it seemed strange, it occurred to me that the song is about love, about what you’re willing to do for love." He has not done much. Or, at least, he doesn’t want to tell about it. When he talks about that love between a man and a woman, of which the press invents names, he is so clever that he is convincing. "I, right now, do not have a girl who I can call and say to her: 'Honey, how are you? I hope that you're well, I'll see you at such-and such time.' The other day I was reading in a gossip magazine the list of all my girlfriends and I don’t even know who some of them are." And he denied that Jennifer Love-Hewitt is his girlfriend. She is just a great girl who he goes out with sometimes and who stars in videos (Hero). He also admitted that he likes women in their 40’s, that he has gay friends, that he loved working under the direction of Robert Rodriguez in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, that he sleeps with his dog Grammy (a gift from his record company) and that he is very secure about his sexuality. What he does not like to speak of much is his hair. Cristina, point-blank, asked him if he wears a wig, 'because in the spots where there used to be two receding hairlines before, today there are bangs'. He denied it immediately. When finishing the program, he went all around the Blue Dolphin studies and made a long stop over at the Cristina Magazine. He picked up an issue and read it at great length. He requested a cover and he made a disbelieving face when the director promised it. Later, he said to Cristina that he needed to speak to her privately. But nobody knew of what. The Human Being Angie Suarez is HIV positive and five years ago, during a difficult time, she requested to meet Enrique Iglesias. He visited her in the hospital and since then they have become very good friends. "We talk about everything and she, in spite of her age, can talk about things that I didn’t used to talk about." The Nice Guy He says that if a female police officer gives him a ticket, he is able to charm his way out of it. And if it’s a man... also!