Salma Hayek

• 1. Introduction

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  Salma Hayek was once told, after arriving in the United States, that her accent would make moviegoers think of housekeepers. In 2023, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2021, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Between those two judgments sits a Mexican and American actress and film producer who started in Mexican television, spent years finding work in a Hollywood that offered few parts to Latin women, and then began creating her own. How did a young star with limited English and a learning difficulty turn a closed door into a production company, a directing career and a place among Hollywood's most powerful Latina figures? And what did she do with that influence once she had it?

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• 2. Veracruz to Televisa

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  Coatzacoalcos, in the Mexican state of Veracruz, is where Salma Hayek was born. Her father, Sami Hayek Domínguez, is of Lebanese descent, with ancestors from the city of Baabdat. He owns an industrial-equipment firm, works as an oil company executive and once ran for mayor of Coatzacoalcos. Her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina, is an opera singer and talent scout of Spanish descent. In an interview in Madrid with Un Nuevo Día in 2015, Hayek described herself as fifty percent Lebanese and fifty percent Spanish. Her younger brother, also named Sami, became a furniture designer.

  At age 12, Hayek chose to study at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, having been raised in a wealthy and devout Catholic family. It was at school that she was diagnosed with dyslexia. Later she attended the Universidad Iberoamericana, where she studied international relations. In a 2011 interview with V magazine, she added a surprising detail to her biography: she had once been an illegal immigrant in the United States, though only for a short time.

  Her screen career began in 1988 with the television series Un Nuevo Amanecer, which won her the TVyNovelas Award for Best Debut Actress. The network Televisa then picked her, at age 23, for the title role in the telenovela Teresa. The series ran from 1989 to 1991, for two years and 125 episodes. It made her a star across Mexico and brought her the 1990 TVyNovelas Award for Best Female Revelation. When the final episode aired, she was already planning to leave Mexico behind.

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• 3. Starting Over

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  Los Angeles was the destination in 1991, once Teresa had finished its run. Hayek arrived with limited fluency in English, and her dyslexia made the language harder still. She signed up for English lessons and studied acting under Stella Adler. Work was scarce. Looking back, she said that "there was no industry or parts for Latin women".

  The credits that followed were small. She guest-starred on Dream On in 1992 and The Sinbad Show in 1993, and took supporting roles in the drama Mi Vida Loca in 1993 and the Showtime thriller Roadracers in 1994. Roadracers mattered for a reason nobody could yet see. It was her first collaboration with director Robert Rodriguez.

  Mexico, meanwhile, had not forgotten her. In 1994, director Jorge Fons cast her as Alma, a poverty-stricken young woman who becomes a sex worker, in El callejón de los milagros, known in English as Miracle Alley. The film adapted a novel by the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, relocating the story from Cairo to Mexico City. It drew critical acclaim, reportedly won more awards than any other film in Mexican cinema history, and earned Hayek an Ariel Award nomination for Best Actress.

  The television giant Emilio Azcárraga Milmo took a personal interest in her. A special dispensation from him let her appear on both Televisa and its rival TV Azteca, which few actresses were allowed to do. He also tried to tempt her home with an exclusive deal. She turned it down to keep pursuing Hollywood.

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• 4. The Rodriguez Connection

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  Elizabeth Avellan and her then-husband Robert Rodriguez, who was also her co-producer, cast Hayek in Desperado in 1995. She played Carolina, a self-confident and feisty character opposite Antonio Banderas. Hayek had to audition several times for the part, and she later called the process "grueling". One love scene was especially hard, because she did not want to be nude on camera. She remarked that it "took eight hours to film instead of an hour".

  The gamble paid off. Desperado had a budget of $7 million and grossed $25.4 million in the United States. It became her breakout film. Rodriguez followed it with From Dusk till Dawn in 1996, where she played a vampire queen in a short but unforgettable role, performing an erotic table-top snake dance.

  Rodriguez kept calling. In 1998 she played a nurse in his supernatural horror film The Faculty. In 2003 she appeared in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over and returned as her Desperado character in Once Upon a Time in Mexico. That film made $98.2 million worldwide and closed out the Mariachi Trilogy. By then she had a very different project on her mind, one she had been chasing for years.

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• 5. Becoming Frida

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  Julie Taymor's Frida, released in 2002, was a film that Hayek both produced and starred in. She was playing the surrealist painter Frida Kahlo, whose work had fascinated her since she was 13 or 14. Fascination did not mean instant admiration. She recalled that at that age she did not like the work and found it "ugly and grotesque", yet something kept drawing her back. In time she saw more than pain in it, including irony and humor. She also admired what Diego Rivera saw in Kahlo: "She was a fighter."

  Hayek was relentless about getting the film made. She sought out Dolores Olmedo Patino, the longtime lover of Diego Rivera, who after his death administered the rights to the art of both painters. Rivera had willed that art to the Mexican people, and Olmedo held the trust. Hayek secured access to Kahlo's paintings and began assembling a cast. In 1998 she approached Alfred Molina to play Rivera.

  Frida arrived as a critical darling and an arthouse success. David Denby of The New Yorker wrote: "Smart, willful, and perverse, this Frida is nobody's servant, and the tiny Hayek plays her with head held high". The performance made Hayek the first Mexican actress nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also earned nominations for a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a British Academy Film Award.

  Taymor and Hayek did not part ways after the film. In 2007, Hayek turned up in Taymor's musical Across the Universe as a nurse singing a cover of The Beatles song "Happiness Is A Warm Gun".

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• 6. Behind the Camera

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  Ventanarosa was the name Hayek gave to her production company when she founded it in 1999. Her first feature as a producer, El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba, became Mexico's official selection for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. In 2001 she produced and starred in the television film In the Time of the Butterflies, based on Julia Álvarez's book about the Mirabal sisters. Hayek played Minerva, one of the sisters, while Edward James Olmos played the Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, whom they opposed.

  Directing followed. Hayek produced and directed The Maldonado Miracle, a Showtime film based on a book of the same name, and won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Children Special. She also directed music videos, including Prince's "Te Amo Corazon" in 2005, featuring Mía Maestro, and "Nada Se Compara" in 2012, featuring Jada Pinkett Smith.

  In 2001, producer Ben Silverman acquired the rights and scripts of the Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea. Hayek later adapted the story for American television with him. The project began in 2004 as a planned half-hour sitcom for NBC. ABC picked it up for the 2006-2007 season as Ugly Betty, with Silvio Horta also producing. Hayek served as an executive producer and guest-starred as Sofia Reyes, a magazine editor. The show won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series in 2007 and brought Hayek two nominations at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards.

  In 2007 she finalized negotiations with MGM to become CEO of Ventanarosa, now a Latin-themed film production company. She also signed a two-year deal with ABC to develop projects for the network.

  Her most personal production came in 2014. Hayek produced The Prophet, adapted from Kahlil Gibran's 1923 book, and voiced a widowed mother named Kamila. She called it a "love letter to my heritage" and said it helped her explore her relationship with her late grandfather, who loved the book. Her hope was that the people no longer with her would be proud of it.

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• 7. Hits and Misses

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  Wild Wild West, her 1999 Western with Will Smith, was one of the most expensive films ever made at the time of its release, and it proved a commercial failure. That same year she played the muse Serendipity in Kevin Smith's religious satire Dogma, which critics and audiences received well. Her record kept swinging between the two poles. Fools Rush In, a 1997 romantic comedy with Matthew Perry, earned three out of four stars from Roger Ebert, who singled out her performance. After the Sunset, a 2004 heist comedy with Pierce Brosnan, flopped. Even so, critic James Berardinelli called it "a mess, but it's a fun, breezy mess".

  The 2010s brought some of her largest audiences. Grown Ups, in 2010, made $271.4 million globally despite negative reviews, and its sequel in 2013 repeated that pattern. In 2011 she voiced Kitty Softpaws, a street-savvy tuxedo cat, alongside Antonio Banderas in Puss in Boots. That film grossed $554.9 million and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature. In 2016 she voiced Teresa del Taco in Sausage Party, which she called "the naughtiest thing I've ever done". It became the highest grossing R-rated animated film of all time, with $140.4 million worldwide.

  Smaller films brought critical respect. Tale of Tales, in 2015, competed for the Palme d'Or at the 68th Cannes Film Festival, with Hayek as the Queen of Longtrellis. In Beatriz at Dinner, in 2017, she played a holistic medicine practitioner at a wealthy client's dinner party. Owen Gleiberman of Variety praised a "luminous performance", and the role won her an Independent Spirit Film Award nomination. The Hitman's Bodyguard made $176.6 million that same year.

  Then came Eternals, with Chloé Zhao, who personally selected her to play Ajak, the wise and spiritual leader of the group. Hayek said the costume moved her to tears: "for a Mexican girl, a Mexican woman in her 50s, to be a superhero. I felt a lot of pride to have my superhero outfit on." The film made $401 million worldwide and became her highest-grossing live action film. It also made her the first Arab actress with a main role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A sequel to Puss in Boots, The Last Wish, followed with critical acclaim and $485.3 million at the box office.

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• 8. Beyond the Screen

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  On the 13th of December 2017, The New York Times published an op-ed by Hayek in which she said that producer Harvey Weinstein had harassed and abused her during the production of Frida. That was one chapter in a long record of public advocacy. In 2005 she testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in support of reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. In 2006 she donated $25,000 to a shelter for battered women in Coatzacoalcos and $50,000 to anti-domestic violence groups in Monterrey. She also sits on the board of V-Day, the charity founded by playwright Eve Ensler. Hayek once said she was not a feminist but later changed her mind, explaining that "a lot of amazing women have made me who I am today".

  Sierra Leone provided one of her most discussed moments. During a UNICEF fact-finding trip in 2009, she breastfed a hungry week-old baby whose mother could not produce milk, hoping to reduce the stigma around breastfeeding. She later became a global spokesperson for the Pampers and UNICEF partnership, under which Procter & Gamble donates the cost of one tetanus vaccination, about 24 cents, for each pack sold. In 2013 she launched Chime for Change with Beyoncé and Frida Giannini, a Gucci campaign for female empowerment. In 2019 the Pinault family pledged US$113 million to the reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral after its fire.

  Commercial work ran alongside the causes. She was a spokeswoman for Revlon in 1998 and has represented Avon since 2004. She modeled for Chopard in 2001 and launched Nuance by Salma Hayek, her cosmetics line sold at CVS, in 2011.

  Her public image was shaped early by sex symbol roles. People named her one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world in 1996-2003 and 2008. The Armani dress she wore to the 1997 Academy Awards was voted by E! Entertainment one of the five most memorable in Oscar history. In 2006 the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center in San Antonio staged Solamente Salma, an exhibition of 16 portrait paintings of her as the Aztec goddess Itzpapalotl. In July 2007 The Hollywood Reporter ranked her fourth on its Latino Power 50. In September 2019 she was one of fifteen women on the cover of British Vogue.

  In private life, Hayek is a naturalized United States citizen who practices yoga. In March 2007 she confirmed both her engagement to François-Henri Pinault, the French billionaire who is CEO of Kering, and her pregnancy. Their daughter was born that September at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. They married on Valentine's Day 2009 in Paris and renewed their vows in Venice that April. Two years later, in 2011, France appointed her a Knight of the National Order of the Legion of Honour, the highest French order of merit.

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