LOS ANGELES - For her latest movie, Penelope Cruz wandered off into the desert and was never heard from again. Well, not quite. But shooting the action flick "Sahara" in the African desert, Cruz did have an anxious moment when she got lost heading to the set one day.

"It was five in the morning and I fell asleep in the car, and when I woke up, it was just me and my driver," Cruz told The Associated Press in an interview. "We had lost the security car behind, and I looked north, nothing, south, nothing. East, west, not one light."

Nothing but endless sand surrounded them. The driver had a walkie-talkie, "but it was funny to hear the conversation, because they’re going, `Where are you?’ `Well, where are you?’ And you’re not in a place where there’s a sign. There’s nothing. The feeling is a little scary at the beginning."

"And then I just said, `You know what? I’m going to go back to sleep," she added, laughing.

They eventually caught sight of the set and arrived safely. The crew did have to shoot one of her scenes with a double while Cruz was lost.

Adapted from the Clive Cussler novel, "Sahara" stars Cruz as a United Nations doctor trying to trace the source of a potential epidemic. Matthew McConaughey stars as Cussler’s roguish adventurer Dirk Pitt, and Steve Zahn plays his sidekick, Al Giordino. The movie opens April 8.

Cruz’s only other unpleasant moments during the shoot?

"I had a couple of nightmares about camels," said the actress, who trained in camel-riding for two months for a scene in which she, McConaughey and Zahn pursue a train through the desert.

That sequence was among the favorites for director Breck Eisner, the son of soon to be ex-Disney chief Michael Eisner.

"The four of us slept out under the stars. We would have barbecues under the stars and sing around the campfire, and during the day, we’d shoot this action scene with the three of them galloping on camels," said Eisner, who is making his feature-film directing debut. "It was really a pretty magical experience."