Salma Hayek
ALL ABOUT SALMA HAYEK
Full Name:Salma Valgarma Hayek-Jimenez
Date of Birth:2 September 1966
Place of Birth:Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico
Bio:
A bona fide celebrity goddess in her native Mexico, Hayek emigrated in 1991 to Los Angeles, where she willingly plunged to the bottom of the heap in order to take a shot at conquering Hollywood. Intensive lessons, both in English and acting, paid handsome dividends in 1995, when the diminutive dynamo lit a fire under Antonio Banderas in wunderkind director Robert Rodriguez’s balletic bullet ballad Desperado. Continuing to collect hunky co-stars, Hayek struck sparks with a Baldwin brother in both Fair Game and Fled, and made an undead love slave out of George Clooney in From Dusk ‘Til Dawn. Salma Hayek Internet shrines cropped up like weeds, and in 1997 the sultry spitfire landed her first lead role in the States, playing opposite Friends fave Matthew Perry in the cross-cultural romantic comedy Fools Rush In.
The daughter of a Lebanese-descended father and a Spanish-descended mother, Hayek was born and raised in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico. Determined to see that her grandchild develop into a ravishing beauty, her grandmother frequently shaved young Salma’s head and clipped her eyebrows, in the belief that such treatments would add body and sheen to her granddaughter’s thick dark locks. Equally determined to see that she became well-educated, Hayek’s staunchly Catholic parents shipped her off to a boarding school in Louisiana when she was 12. While the beguiling youngster proved both attentively studious and properly religious, she also displayed a bent for mischief that she chiefly directed against the long-suffering nuns who ran the school: among other infamies, she once slipped into the faculty dormitory and set all of the alarm clocks back three hours. The end result of such she-nun-igans was that Hayek ended up suspended and carted back home after just two years. It only took her two more years to finish high school, and her mother, fearful of the effects ”college boys” might have on her impressionable young daughter, sent Hayek to Houston, where she lived with an aunt until her 17th birthday.
Returning to Mexico once more, Hayek relocated to Mexico City to attend college, where she commenced international relations studies. Though she had harbored acting ambitions since childhood, Hayek had for years been reluctant to seriously pursue such a chancy vocation for fear of alienating her parents. Ultimately, she decided the path of the dutiful daughter and stable career girl was one she could not bear to walk and frankly confronted her parents about her aspiration. As she later told one interviewer, ”One day I took my dad to lunch. I asked him if he believed in destiny and he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Well, I believe it’s my destiny to become an actress.”’ In spite of voluble objections from her family and the derision and disbelief of her friends, Hayek quit college and determinedly embarked on an acting career. She first found work in plays at neighborhood theaters, including one assignment as the heroine of Aladdin and His Marvelous Lamp. Several months of tireless stage work led to jobs making television commercials, which in turn yielded a casting in Nuevo Amanecer, a popular daytime TV serial. With no more experience than that to her credit, Hayek got herself cast as the title character of a second serial, Teresa, the phenomenal popularity of which almost immediately made its fetching young star the most fanatically revered actress in Mexico.
Not content to settle for the comparatively meager rewards of superstardom, Mexican-style, Hayek set her confident sights on Hollywood, and moved north in 1991. What followed thereafter was a taxing period of adjustment, beginning with an 18-month hiatus from acting that was primarily occupied with English lessons. Also during that period, Hayek studied acting under famed dramatician Stella Adler, and taught herself to drive a car: two days of stick-shift driving convinced her to switch to automatic, and she slowly acquainted herself with the tangled maze of L.A.’s freeways by continually requesting directions from her more streetwise friends via her trusty cellular phone. Hayek’s first big break came in 1993, when she spent four months auditioning for a headlining role in Allison Anders’s girlz-’n'-the-hood drama Mi Vida Loca. Anders eventually cast another actress in the desired-for lead assignment, but Hayek’s tenacity so impressed the director that she gave her a smaller part in the film for the express purpose of enabling the promising young actress to qualify for membership in the Screen Actors Guild.
Other small roles followed, mostly on television, but it was an appearance on a Spanish-language cable-access talk show that led to Hayek’s big breakthrough. While in the process of planning a sequel to his wildly successful debut film, El Mariachi, Mexican-American director Robert Rodriguez happened to tune in to Hayek’s talk show appearance during a fit of late-night channel surfing. Mesmerized by the lovely and engaging actress, Rodriguez wasted no time tracking her down, and soon secured her interest in tackling the female lead in his soon-to-be-produced big-studio debut, Desperado. Rodriguez’s financial backers initially resisted his choice of Hayek, but the director won them over by showcasing her in his made-for-cable installment of Showtime’s Rebel Highway series, Roadracers. A solid commercial success, Desperado also garnered Hayek rave reviews for her show-stopping, saliva-inducing performance. Despite the fact she was disappointingly underrepresented in her next two outings, in the limp thrillers Fair Game and Fled, Hayek’s performances nevertheless provided much-needed zip for both projects, and 1997 found her nicely romantically matched in both Fools Rush In and TNT’s adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which she portrayed Esmerelda to Mandy Patinkin’s Quasimodo.
Hayek’s film agenda continues to offer a steady diet of roles: She followed her turn in the disco redux 54 with an appearance alongside Will Smith and Kevin Kline in Wild Wild West, and co-starred with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Rock, Linda Fiorentino, and Alan Rickman in Kevin Smith’s Dogma. Through her Ventanarosa production company, she co-produced The Velocity of Gary, an offbeat romantic comedy which teamed her with Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio, and another of her co-productions, the Mexican feature No One Writes to the Colonel, was recently in competition at Cannes. Hayek is currently filming the biopic Frida, in which she tackles a much-coveted portrayal of painter Frida Kahlo.
On a more personal note, Hayek is romantically attached to actor Ed Norton.
Trivia:
Chosen by People (USA) magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world [1996]
Is dyslexic.
Was ranked 8th of the 100 Sexiest Women by FHM Taiwan (2001).
Frequently collaborates with Antonio Banderas and Robert Rodriguez.
Fluent in English, Arabic, Spanish and Portugese
Was originally considered for the part of Alicia Larde in _Beautiful Mind, A (2001)_ because the character in real life is from El Salvador. But the character for the film was later changed to American and given to Jennifer Connelly.
Salma is an Arabic name that means “peace” or “calm”.
Godmother to Robert Rodriguez’s children.
Measurements: 36C-25-37 (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
She was sent to a boarding school in Louisiana at age 12, but was soon sent back home after getting in trouble for frequently terrorizing the nuns!
Father was born in Lebanon and came to Mexico to start a small business where he met her mother.
Studied International Relations & Drama at College in Mexico City.
Won Best Newcomer at the 1989 Novela Awards for “Nuevo amanecer, Un” (1988).
Has her own production company, Ventanarosa.
Is the second Latin American actress to be nominated for the Best Actress in a Leading Role Academy Award, for her performance in Frida (2002). Brazilian veteran Fernanda Montenegro was the first, for Central do Brasil (1998).
Her brother, Sami, designs custom chairs. His celebrity clients include Jennifer Aniston and her ex-husband, Brad Pitt.
Made the cut to People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people list twice. in 1996 and 2003
Was named one of the ten most stylish women in the world by Mr. Blackwell (aka Richard Selzer) in 1997. InStyle named her the most stylish celebrity of 2003 and Eonline.com ranked her as the best dressed female celebrity.
Ranked #31 in Stuff magazine’s “102 Sexiest Women in the World” (2002).
Good friend of Penélope Cruz.
She loves dogs
E! entertainment voted her look at the 1997 Academy Awards one of the 5 most memorable in Oscar history. At the event she wore a beaded Armani gown complemented by a 1920s diamond tiara.
Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005
Is good friends with Ashley Judd
Her parents are Sami Hayek (oil company executive) and Diana Jimenez Hayek (opera singer).
Played a (mythological creature disguised as a) stripper twice: in From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and in Dogma (1999) (A Vampire and a Muse respectively).
Named #34 on the Maxim magazine Hot 100 of 2005 list.
Named #12 in FHM’s “100 Sexiest Women in the World 2005″ special supplement. (2005)
Visited Guatemala from 2 May 2005 to 5 May 2005 as ambassador to Youth/AIDS, to promote the prevention of the mortal disease. Ashley Judd and Colombian pop singer Juanes also came with her.
Her younger brother is a highly respected make-up artist in Hollwood.
Named #36 in FHM magazine’s “100 Sexiest Women in the World 2006″ supplement. (2006).
As the announcer for the Oscars 2007, she was able to announce best friend Penélope Cruz’ nominations for Best Actress for Volver (2006/I).
Engaged to businessman Francois-Henri Pinualt. Pinault owns PPR, the luxury goods firm that owns iconic fashion houses Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent [March 9, 2007].
Gave birth to her first child, a baby girl named Valentina Paloma Pinault, on Friday September 21th 2007. Father is Salma’s fiancé Francois-Henri Pinault, chairman and chief executive officer of the luxury goods company PPR SA.
Ranked #90 on the Maxim magazine Hot 100 of 2007 list.
Recently diagnosed with diabetes while pregnant (July 2007).
Her fiancé, François-Henri Pinault, has a son Francois b. 1998 and a daughter Mathide b. 2001 from his first marriage.
She and Francois-Henri Pinault called off their engagement. They initially intended to marry in spring 2009. [July 2008]
Quotes:
“And I highly recommend for all the women in the world, even if they’re 71, you can never take for granted that he loves you. It’s always good to flirt with him. It’s a great sport.”
“Every woman who thinks she is the only victim of violence has to know that there are many more”
“For me, I have to say that I like to work a lot too, but I like not working better. The perfect scenario is when you just worked and you know something’s coming up, then you have four, five, six months off. But you know you’re going to have a job later.”
“For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying.”
“How I would describe my characters is absolutely different from how I would describe myself.”
“I aim for a lifetime full of movies.”
“I also have a film coming up called Breaking Up, and my part in that was not written for a Latina, and my character is not particularly pretty or sexy or exotic.”
“I became obsessed with all these women who die never feeling they did anything extraordinary with their lives.”
“I directed a movie and now, I’m going to do the editing.”
“I do have a Mexican accent, but that doesn’t mean that I’m a Latin vamp.”
“I don’t see women and think of them as competition or with judgment. Women really move me. I feel connected to all kinds of women. I am angry because I think we’ve been mistreated throughout history in different countries, including America. I admire women.”
“I have a farm and I love it there. There’s really nothing to do, but even watching the chickens, its fun.”
“I have a small house so I borrow everything except art, that’s what I love.”
“I keep waiting to meet a man who has more balls than I do.”
“I know the only reason that I haven’t gotten many good parts is because I am Latin - and they tell it to my face a lot of times.”
“I proved to myself that if I believe in something and set my mind to it I could actually accomplish it.”
“I really do love Diana Ross; I grew up listening to her records. I grew up in a little town in Mexico, so while we got the music, we never got the experience of watching her.”
“I think it’s nice for women to try to be sexy for their man.”
“I think it’s not a femme fatale when someone is not doing it to manipulate men or be like a black widow. She loves him. She does it out of love. She wants him so badly to stay with her.”
“I want to work for a long, long time and keep growing in my work, and if I am very lucky and very blessed, maybe somewhere along the line there will be one movie in there that becomes a classic.”
“I’m good at working, but I’m very good at playing.”
“I’ve stolen a couple of hearts and they are in my private collection!”
“If you give me any problem in America I can trace it down to domestic violence. It is the cradle of most of the problems, economic, psychological, educational.”
“My driving abilities from Mexico have helped me get through Hollywood.”
“My heart has been stolen too - but I’ve gone and got it back every single time!”
“My new movie, Fools Rush In, is a romantic comedy and the girl I play in that is very warm, very sweet.”
“No woman has to be a victim of physical abuse. Women have to feel like they are not alone.”
“People often say that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves.”
“Producing is hell, writing is frustrating, acting is really satisfying, directing is heaven.”
“So you have to keep waiting and then they give you the script and it’s terrible. Then you have to go to the rewrite and they’re very upset because you didn’t like it. I went through that for seven years.”
“Some men have a silly theory about beautiful women - that somewhere along the line they’ll turn into a monster. That movie gave them a chance to watch it happen.”
“There has never been a female director who has won an Oscar. There has only been one woman who won at the Cannes Film Festival.”
“There is a subconscious way of taking violence as a way of expression, as a normality, and it has a lot of effects in the youth in the way they absorb education and what they hope to get out of life.”
“There’s a lot about the character. It doesn’t always happen, but there are some characters you really create a relationship with, almost as if they were your friend. And you never get into their heads again or think like them.”
“They offered me that film before I did Frida and I said, no, I’m not capable of directing. Then after seeing Julie direct, I was inspired by it. She motivated me to do it, because we don’t have role models as woman for directors.”
“What is important is to believe in something so strongly that you’re never discouraged.”
“When I first came to Hollywood I was told to go out with an agent because it was good for my career. So I went to a party with him because it was good for my ‘career.’ Well, he thought the whole thing was a big date. Needless to say, I was very upset.”
“When it is important for you to say something and you find a vehicle to say it, then go for it. It is so rare when that happens so I think every minute spent fighting for it is always worth it. Even if nothing ends up happening, it’s still worth the fight.”
Filmography:
Salma Hayek Filmography as an actress:
2009 Cirque du Freak
2008 Big Night of Stars (TV)
2007 Across The Universe
“Ugly Betty” (7 episodes, 2006-2007)
2006 Lonely Hearts
2006 Ask the Dust
2006 Bandidas
2006 Lonely Hearts
2004 After the Sunset
2003 Hotel
2003 Once Upon a Time in Mexico
2003 Sian Ka’an The Maldonado Miracle
2003 Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
2002 Frida
2002 El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba
2002 Death to Smoochy
2001 In the Time of the Butterflies
2000 Chain of Fools
2000 La Gran Vida
2000 Timecode
1999 The Velocity of Gary (Not His Real Name)
1999 No One Writes to the Colonel
1999 Wild Wild West
1999 Get Bruce
1999 Forever Hollywood
1998 Dogma
1998 The Velocity of Gary
1998 The Faculty
1998 54
1998 Midaq Alley
1997 Fools Rush In
1997 Breaking Up
1997 The Hunchback
1996 From Dusk Till Dawn
1996 Fled
1995 Four Rooms
1995 Desperado
1995 Fair Game
1994 Mi Vida Loca - My Crazy Life
Salma Hayek Filmography as an Producer:
2010 Untitled Nicolás López Project
“Ugly Betty” (executive producer) (37 episodes, 2006-2008)
2003 The Maldonado Miracle (TV) (senior executive producer)
2002 Frida
2001 In the Time of the Butterflies (TV) (executive producer)
Salma Hayek Awards:
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scie
2002 Best Actress Frida
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
2007 Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series Ugly Betty [TV Series]
Broadcast Film Critics Association
2003 Best Actress Frida
2001 Best Actress in a Picture Made for Television In the Time of the Butterflies
Golden Globe
2002 Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama Frida
Screen Actors Guild
2002 Best Actress Frida
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