Technically, she is not Mexican at all: in one interview, she said she is 50% Lebanese and 50% Spanish. All her father's ancestors are from the Lebanese town of Baabda, her mother is from Spain, and yet Salma was born in a city with a hard-to-pronounce name, Coatzacoalcos, on the Gulf of Mexico. The family was very wealthy - they could easily afford to send their 12-year-old daughter to study in the USA. When Salma returned to Mexico, she enrolled in university. And soon, to her parents' great dismay, she dropped out, deciding that her destiny was to be a movie actress. She was quickly cast in one TV series, then another (the two-year-running "Teresa" became a big hit in Mexico). Ultimately, Salma decided that this was not enough; she needed to act in films. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, she recounted: "At that time, there was almost no film industry in Mexico. So where to go in that case? To Mecca!" **Conquering Hollywood** And she went to Hollywood. It was terrible. Salma was a spoiled girl from a wealthy family, always pampered - and here she had to do everything herself. First and foremost, of course, she had to learn English. She was confident that she spoke it quite well (after all, she studied in Louisiana and then lived in Texas for a while!), but those illusions were instantly shattered: she had forgotten everything. Sure, she understood a lot, could order a Caesar salad in a restaurant or chat with a saleswoman, watched Hollywood movies with Spanish subtitles, and was convinced that in three months she would achieve perfection. Nothing of the sort happened, of course. As an actress, she also needed to speak English without an accent. And Salma had dyslexia - which means she had significant difficulties understanding written text! At least she had money. She got her driver's license (in California, but in Spanish - "You'd be surprised how easy it is to live in California without knowing a word of English," she later told Oprah). She rented an apartment. And she started looking for an agent, sending scenes from her telenovelas to agencies ("I chose episodes where I cried - I was so naive that I thought they would be impressed! But the agents looked at me like I was an alien"). Naturally, over time she somehow overcame these difficulties (she also studied at the famous Stella Adler acting studio). But no one was thinking of giving her serious roles. In Mexico, it was a different story: when she briefly returned there, she played a prostitute in the film "The Alley of Miracles," and was met with applause, receiving a local "Oscar" - the Ariel Award. Producers dreamed of her returning to her homeland. Perhaps that would have happened in the end, but fortunately, while filming the TV movie "The Hired Guns," Salma met her compatriot - Robert Rodriguez. He cast her in the film "From Dusk Till Dawn" as the half-dead, half-vampire Esmeralda nicknamed Santanico Pandemonium. And immediately after that - in the film "Desperado" with Antonio Banderas. In both cases, perfect diction was not required. And yes, she quickly achieved fame. **The Scene in 'Desperado'** About "Desperado," she recalled that it was very difficult for her to film the love scene - she didn't want her father and brother to see her on screen in such a way (Salma comes from a deeply Catholic family). She cried continuously, the shoot that was supposed to last an hour went on for eight hours, and an enraged Rodriguez almost fired her - and then painstakingly pieced together the scene from separate bits. In the end, Salma read the very first review that said, "Salma Hayek is a bomb!" - and she burst into tears even more. The word "bomb" in English is often used to mean "failure" - and she thought they were calling her a terrible actress. Only later did a friend calm her down, saying, "Silly, they mean you're a sex bomb!" (Yes, her language skills were that poor even by that point!) But Salma was upset here too - she wanted to be considered a good actress, and she was persistently called sexy, sexy, sexy... She starred in several notable films. In the outrageously expensive sci-fi western "Wild Wild West" with Will Smith (that was a true bomb in that sense). In the Oscar-winning "Traffic" by Steven Soderbergh. In the sci-fi semi-comedy "The Faculty" about aliens inhabiting the bodies of high school teachers at Rodriguez's best friend's school. But she was only unanimously recognized as a truly good actress in 2003 when she played Frida Kahlo in the film "Frida," which she also produced herself. These were incredibly challenging shoots, but Hayek showed ironclad determination here too. She persuaded Alfred Molina, Jeffrey Rush, and Edward Norton to act (who even rewrote the script - otherwise he wouldn't agree). She endured a struggle with producer Harvey Weinstein, who, as usual, harassed her and demanded that Salma appear on screen completely naked (he said that otherwise he would leave the project and it would fail)... But the success was serious: the biography of the passionate and suffering artist received six Oscar nominations, including one for Hayek (who was then surpassed by Nicole Kidman). After that, there were many films, but no role compared to this triumph. Salma was mostly talked about in connection with her marriage: she married François-Henri Pinault, a billionaire and head of the Kerling company (you probably have never heard of it, but it currently owns such fashionable brands as Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, and Brioni). Before marrying Pinault, she gave birth to a daughter in September 2007. She is now 18, and Salma is 60. How time flies!
