Salma Hayek

Salma Valgarma Hayek Pinault (/ˈhaɪɛk/ HY-ek, Spanish: [ˈsalma ˈxaʝek]; née Hayek Jiménez; born September 2, 1966) is a Mexican and American actress and film producer. She began her career in Mexico with starring roles in the telenovela Teresa (1989–1991) as well as the romantic drama Midaq Alley (1995). She soon established herself in Hollywood with appearances in films such as Desperado (1995), From Dusk till Dawn (1996), Wild Wild West (1999), and Dogma (1999).

Hayek's portrayal of painter Frida Kahlo in the biopic Frida (2002), which she also produced, made her the first Mexican actress to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In subsequent years, Hayek focused more on producing while starring in the action-centered pictures Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), After the Sunset (2004) and Bandidas (2006). She achieved further commercial success with the comedies Grown Ups (2010), Grown Ups 2 (2013) and The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017), and lent her voice for the animated Puss in Boots (2011), Sausage Party (2016) and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022). She also earned critical acclaim for her performances in the dramas Tale of Tales (2015), Beatriz at Dinner (2017) and House of Gucci (2021). She played Ajak in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Eternals (2021), which emerged as her highest-grossing live action film.

Hayek's directing, producing and acting work on television has earned her four Emmy Awards nominations. She won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Children Special for The Maldonado Miracle (2004) and received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, one for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series and the other for Outstanding Comedy Series, for her work on the ABC television comedy-drama Ugly Betty (2006–2010). She also produced and played Minerva Mirabal in the Showtime film In the Time of the Butterflies (2001) and guest-starred on the NBC comedy series 30 Rock (2009–2013).

As a public figure, Hayek has been cited as one of Hollywood's most powerful and influential Latina actresses as well as one of the world's most beautiful women by various media outlets. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023. In 2021, she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is married to business magnate François-Henri Pinault, with whom she has a daughter.

Salma Hayek was born in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico. Her father, Sami Hayek Domínguez, is of Lebanese descent. His ancestors hail from the city of Baabdat, Lebanon, a city Salma and her father visited in 2015 to promote her movie Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. He owns an industrial-equipment firm and is an oil company executive in Mexico; he once ran for mayor of Coatzacoalcos. Her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina, is an opera singer and talent scout; she is of Spanish descent. While visiting Madrid in an interview in 2015 with Un Nuevo Día, Hayek described herself as fifty-percent Lebanese and fifty-percent Spanish saying that her grandmother/maternal great-grandparents were from Spain. Her younger brother, Sami, is a furniture designer.

Hayek was raised in a wealthy, devout Catholic family, and at age 12 opted to study at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. In school, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. She attended university at the Universidad Iberoamericana studying international relations. In a 2011 interview with V magazine, Hayek mentioned that she was once an illegal immigrant in the United States, although it was not for a long period of time.

Hayek's first screen appearance was in the television series in Un Nuevo Amanecer (1988), which earned her the TVyNovelas Award for Best Debut Actress. Televisa subsequently selected Hayek, who was 23 at the time, to play the title role in Teresa (1989–1991), a successful Mexican telenovela that made her a star in Mexico. The series ran for two years and 125 episodes, and earned her the 1990 TVyNovelas Award for Best Female Revelation.

Determined to pursue a film career in Hollywood, Hayek moved to Los Angeles in 1991 following the conclusion of Teresa. With limited fluency in English and dyslexia, she soon enrolled in English lessons and studied acting under Stella Adler. Hayek initially struggled with the lack of acting job offers after moving to the United States, recalling that "there was no industry or parts for Latin women", and was once even told that her accent would "make moviegoers think of housekeepers". During this period, she secured guest-spots in television series such as Dream On (1992) and The Sinbad Show (1993) as well as supporting roles in the drama Mi Vida Loca (1993), and the made-for-Showtime thriller Roadracers (1994), her first collaboration with director Robert Rodriguez.

In 1994, Hayek was cast as Alma, a poverty-stricken young woman who becomes a sex worker, in Jorge Fons's drama El callejón de los milagros (Miracle Alley), which was based on the 1940s eponymous novel by Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz and translated from Cairo to Mexico City. The film was the subject of critical acclaim, reportedly won more awards than any other movie in the history of Mexican cinema, and earned Hayek a nomination for the Ariel Award for Best Actress.

In 1995, Robert Rodriguez and his co-producer and then-wife, Elizabeth Avellan, cast Hayek opposite Antonio Banderas in the starring role of self-confident and feisty Carolina in Desperado, her breakout film. Describing the film's process as "grueling", Hayek had to audition several times for Rodriguez before landing the part, and a love scene in the script proved particularly difficult for her to film because she did not want to be nude on camera. She once remarked: "It took eight hours [to film] instead of an hour". Budgeted at $7 million, Desperado was a commercial success, grossing $25.4 million in the United States. A brief role as a vampire queen followed in Rodriguez's cult horror film From Dusk till Dawn (1996), in which she performed an erotic table-top snake dance. She also appeared in the 1996 drama Follow Me Home and the cop comedy Fled.

Hayek next starred in the romantic comedy Fools Rush In (1997) as a photographer in an on-and-off relationship with a New York City architect, played by Matthew Perry. Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and described it as "a sweet, entertaining retread of an ancient formula", elevated by good performances (particularly Hayek's) and an insightful "level of observation and human comedy". Fools Rush In was a moderate commercial success and earned Hayek an ALMA Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Feature Film. In another romantic comedy, Breaking Up (also 1997), she and Russell Crowe portrayed a couple whose relationship leads to an out-of-the-blue marriage. Ken Eisner of Variety wrote: "Russell Crowe and Salma Hayek make attractive leads, but they have neither the marquee power nor the requisite chemistry to keep Breaking Up from getting left at the altar of general distribution." Indeed, the film was distributed for selected markets in the United States only.

In 1998, Hayek played an aspiring young singer in the 1970s New York City nightlife scene in Mark Christopher's drama 54, a doughnut shop waitress in Dan Ireland's dramedy The Velocity of Gary and a nurse in Rodriguez's supernatural horror film The Faculty. In 1999, Hayek was unorthodoxly cast in Kevin Smith's religious satire Dogma as Serendipity, "the [Muse] who throughout history inspired all the geniuses of art and music, like Mozart and Michelangelo, and never got any of the credit". She also portrayed the alleged daughter of a kidnapped scientist alongside Will Smith in the period Western Wild Wild West. Dogma was well received by critics and audiences, but Wild Wild West proved a commercial failure despite being one of the most expensive films ever made at the time of its release.

Hayek founded her production company, Ventanarosa, in 1999, through which she produces film and television projects. Her first feature as a producer was El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba (1999), Mexico's official selection for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. In 2000, Hayek had an uncredited role in Traffic, and played an aspiring actress in Mike Figgis' experimental film Timecode, a waitress in the Spanish drama Living It Up, and a cop and Playboy model in the heist comedy Chain of Fools. She also produced and starred in the television film In the Time of the Butterflies (2001), based on the book by Julia Álvarez book about the Mirabal sisters. Hayek played one of the sisters, Minerva, and Edward James Olmos played the Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, whom the sisters opposed.

In Julie Taymor's biographical film Frida (2002), Hayek served as a producer and starred as surrealist painter Frida Kahlo. She became interested in the role several years prior to commencing production for the film, having "been fascinated by Kahlo's work from the time she was 13 or 14", although not immediately a fan: "At that age I did not like her work [...] I found it ugly and grotesque. But something intrigued me, and the more I learned, the more I started to appreciate her work. There was a lot of passion and depth. Some people see only pain, but I also see irony and humor. I think what draws me to her is what [husband] Diego saw in her. She was a fighter. Many things could have diminished her spirit, like the accident or Diego's infidelities. But she wasn't crushed by anything". She was so determined to play the role that she sought out Dolores Olmedo Patino, longtime-lover of Diego Rivera, and, after his death, administrator to the rights of Frida and Rivera's art, which Rivera had "willed [...] to the Mexican people", bequeathing the trust to Olmedo. Hayek personally secured access to Kahlo's paintings from Kahlo and began to assemble a supporting cast, approaching Alfred Molina for the role of Rivera in 1998. Upon its release, Frida was a critical darling and an arthouse success. In his review for the film, David Denby of The New Yorker concluded: "Smart, willful, and perverse, this Frida is nobody's servant, and the tiny Hayek plays her with head held high". Her portrayal of Kahlo made her the first Mexican actress to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and earned her Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award and British Academy Film Award nominations for Best Actress.