Desperado was Salma Hayek's big break after she moved to America, but there was one particular
scene she struggled with that she thought was going to get her fired.
Instead, she nailed it, and her career is still going strong decades later.
Salma Hayek grew up in a happy family in Mexico, as she and her younger brother Sami enjoyed
a pretty pampered childhood.
Their mother Diana was an opera singer while their father, also named Sami, worked as an
executive for an oil company.
The actress described her childhood as idyllic when speaking to The Guardian:
"It was a close community, we lived near the ocean and we would be outside all the time
with the neighbors' kids, running free, playing football on the streets and at the beach.
What better place could there be for a child?"
Indeed, life seemed pretty good for young Salma Hayek, but her parents also inspired
her to use her position to help others.
As she noted to The Guardian,
"[My parents] gave away dozens of music scholarships, and my mom opened a school in town, introduced
opera to children and created fantastic programs."
Hayek also grew up close to her grandmother, Maria Luisa Lopez, whom she's called her greatest
inspiration.
As she admitted to The Guardian,
"I still have her inside of me and I always will."
Salma Hayek eventually made her way to the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
Her time in college was short-lived, however, as she dropped out of school to pursue an
acting career.
Her family wasn't exactly thrilled with this decision, but Hayek could not be deterred.
She told her parents that acting was her destiny and that she simply had to pursue it.
When you consider how Hayek's career has turned out, it looks like she made the right decision.
It didn't take long for her to start landing roles.
Her first acting gig was playing Jasmine in a stage production of Aladdin for kids when
she was just 18.
As she described it to W Magazine,
"It was a horrible experience – I got the job, but the work was a nightmare."
But it soon led to bigger things.
Hayek's first TV credit came in 1988, and then the following year she landed the title
role in the telenovela Teresa.
By the time she was 22, she'd become one of the biggest soap opera stars in Mexico.
While Hayek gained a fair bit of fame in Mexico for her soap opera work, she wasn't fully
satisfied.
She set her sights on bigger projects, but alas, her home country didn't have much of
a film industry at the time.
So in order to pursue a movie career, she decided to move to the United States.
People thought that she was being foolish, though.
Not only was she already successful, but she was also held back by the fact that she spoke
very limited English at the time.
"You are a star in Mexico.
Why don't you go back to Mexico?"
Relocating to a new countr–-y would mean that Hayek would have to start from the bottom
once again.
Nevertheless, she was determined.
She knew she wanted more training for her acting because she was worried that she wasn't
a very good performer.
As she explained to O Magazine,
"I [...] was afraid I was a very bad actress, because I'd become famous very fast and was
making money for people.
When you're making money, they're never going to tell you whether you're good or bad.
[...] I had a panic that people would think, 'She's good only because everyone knows her.'"
But Hayek broke past those worries.
She made her way to Los Angeles in 1991 and studied under renowned acting teacher Stella
Adler.
After moving to Los Angeles, it wasn't exactly a cakewalk for Hayek.
In fact, she ended up being diagnosed with dyslexia.
As she revealed to WebMD in 2009,
"I’m really a fast learner.
I always was, which is maybe why in high school they didn’t realize I had dyslexia.
I skipped years without studying too much."
But Hayek took the diagnosis in stride.
As someone who has to read and memorize scripts for a living, dyslexia was a bit of a challenge
— but not an insurmountable one.
She reads rather slowly, but her comprehension is quite good.
As she explained to DuJour,
"I’ve managed to find my way around it.
Sometimes we make a bigger deal of our problems than they really are."
While it might take Hayek longer than other actors to read a script, by the time she's
finished, she already remembers every detail of it.
As she noted,
"I don't think people with dyslexia should think it's an impediment."
Desperado marked a turning point
During her first few years in the United States, Hayek had to fight against racist perceptions,
such as the idea that someone with her accent could play little more than a housekeeper.
"They said, there are no parts for Latinas here.
What do you want to play, the maid?"
She initially only landed a handful of small roles — mainly guest spots on shows you've
probably never heard of like Street Justice and Jack's Place.
It wasn't until 1995 that she got her first big American break in the form of the neo-Western
Desperado.
Landing the role was grueling, as she had to audition several times for director Robert
Rodriguez.
And once she was on set, things didn't exactly go smoothly.
In particular, she was crying throughout the film's now-iconic love scene because she didn't
want to be naked on camera like the scene required.
As she admitted to O Magazine,
"It took eight hours [to film] instead of an hour.
I was nearly fired."
Hayek of course wasn't fired, and Desperado turned out to be quite the success.
It wasn't exactly a high-paying gig, but it got her established in Hollywood, and other
films soon followed, including Fools Rush In, Dogma, and Wild Wild West.
Salma Hayek is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world, but she
didn't exactly set out to become a sex symbol.
Instead, she was truly focused on being the best actress that she could possibly be, so
her eventual status as a bombshell came as a bit of a surprise to her.
When the press first started using that word to refer to her while covering Desperado,
she misunderstood and thought that they were saying her performance had bombed.
When she eventually realized that it wasn't an insult, she was more confused than anything.
As she put it to O Magazine,
"And then it became very depressing—I thought, 'I guess I'm reduced to that now.
That's all I am in the perception of these people.'
[...] It was not my plan, and it was not exciting."
Hayek doesn't mind being appreciated for her looks, but she wants people to see her as
more than just a beautiful woman.
As she opined,
"It's good to be sexy, but when that's all they can see — no."
One of Hayek's most celebrated roles is that of iconic artist Frida Kahlo in the 2002 biopic
Frida.
Hayek both produced and starred in the film.
Getting it off the ground, however, was an arduous task that took eight years to make.
As she put it to NPR in 2017,
"Nobody wanted to do it, nobody helped me with it."
Part of the reason Hayek was so determined to make Frida was that she wanted to fight
against her sex symbol status.
While being a bombshell turned her into a star, she wanted audiences to see that there
was more to her than that.
As she explained to Marie Claire in 2015,
"I was excited to play artist Frida Kahlo, who wasn't considered beautiful.
She had a unibrow and a little bit of a mustache, but she had the courage to be unique.
I think that if you're confident, some kind of beauty always comes through."
While Frida may have been a struggle, it was ultimately well worth it.
Hayek ended up being nominated for an Oscar and, perhaps more importantly, the movie established
her as a versatile actress and a tenacious producer.
"I-I had this conviction.
I had to do this movie.
I did it.
It's done."
In 2006, Salma Hayek met French businessman François-Henri Pinault after being introduced
by his stepmother.
She fell head-over-heels for him, and they ended up tying the knot three years later.
But prior to meeting her husband, Hayek had thought that she'd never find the right man.
As she admitted to Allure in 2015,
"I dated some people I shouldn't have dated.
You get desperate, and you start seeing wonderful things in, like, the wrong guys."
But clearly, Hayek eventually found the right guy.
As she put it to Town & Country in 2019,
"[Pinault is] the best husband in the world.
I get to be who I am with him, and I don’t feel that somebody tries to limit me."
Hayek and Pinault have a blended family consisting of their daughter Valentina and his three
children from his previous relationships.
Hayek actually had a late-in-life pregnancy, as she was 41 when she gave birth to Valentina.
Conceiving at an older age turned out to be a blessing, though.
She considers herself a late bloomer in her personal life and, as she put it to Town & Country,
"I think I’m a better mother because I had her later.
But I do get tired.
I’m not going to lie."
Hayek always wanted a big family, though she was unable to have any more biological children
after Valentina.
Regardless, having stepchildren has proven to be quite a blessing for her.
As she told Red in 2017,
"So I have four [children].
And they are all so different."
In addition to her showbiz career and family life, Salma Hayek is also a passionate activist.
As a young girl, she was inspired by her parents to help people and fight for justice — particularly
for women around the world.
That's what led her to co-found Chime for Change, an organization dedicated to girls'
and women's empowerment.
"My name is Salma Hayek Pinault, and I chime for justice."
Hayek has also worked with UNICEF and is a strong supporter of the Me Too movement.
She's traveled all over the world on behalf of women, with most of her work focused on
preventing domestic violence.
And if you haven't heard much about this, there's a good reason for that.
As she put it during a speech at The Wrap's 6th Power Women Breakfast in 2014, she prefers
to live out her activist work, as opposed to talking about it.
While getting older can be scary, Salma Hayek isn't all that worried.
Instead, she's refreshingly okay with aging, and she won't be pressured into covering up
her gray hairs if she doesn't feel like it.
As she put it in an interview with Holmes Place,
"It’s OK if I am not the most beautiful [...] I am 50, I am other things too, and
now people get to see the other things because they are not distracted by the youth and the
beauty.
I am comfortable [...] I let my white hair grow."
According to Hayek, the worst part about getting older isn't her hair turning gray or her body
changing, or even wrinkles.
Instead, it's been her eyesight getting worse and the fact that she needs to wear glasses
to read.
As she admitted to Net-a-Porter's digital magazine The Edit,
"It has been really, really sad.
The eyes, for me, that's worse than the menopause."
Salma Hayek is a timeless beauty who's proving to the world that you can be stunning at any
age.
While ageism is sadly still present in Hollywood, she's not letting that stop her.
And why shouldn't she feel that way, as she's still turning heads in her 50s.
This could be part of the reason why she has more than 20 million followers on Instagram.
In January 2021, she posted a bikini pic that garnered more than 2 million likes, with one
commenter declaring,
"You are seriously one the most beautiful women I've ever seen.
I'm not even mad at my husband when he talks about how hot you are."
Other Hayek fans also can't help but notice that she looks strikingly younger than she
supposedly is.
Has she somehow discovered the fountain of youth?
Not exactly.
As she revealed to Hola!
USA in 2020, the key to her youthful looks is regular meditation.
Well, in that case, we're off to start our own meditation regimen!
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