Salma Hayek didn’t settle for being one of the most formidable bilingual sirens in Hollywood—she added powerhouse producer and director to a list of assets that keeps on growing
Salma Hayek was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Frida, the first Latina to be so favored, but even that doesn’t do her justice. If they gave out a statuette to the woman who has lately imprinted herself most indelibly in film and television, she’d be a shoo-in. America Ferrera remembers Hayek, a personal idol whom she’d never met, buttonholing her in the lobby of an L.A. hotel to sell her on playing the title role in a TV comedy series Hayek was trying to get off the ground: Ugly Betty. “It was a great pitch,” Ferrera says, “and it was all standing up. She didn’t even buy me a drink!” Adds Hayek’s good friend Penélope Cruz, “Salma could become the next Sherry Lansing if she wants to.”
Only Hayek could have imagined her own ascension to industry triple-threat status—actress, producer, director. She was already in her early twenties when she left telenovela stardom in Mexico to start over in Hollywood, an astounding leap of faith for a young woman, even a voluptuously beautiful one, who was short (5'2") and who spoke broken English with an accent that studio executives worried would remind everyone in the business of their Mexican maids. She took what was available, bringing a saucy intelligence to the stock figure of the Latina spitfire, playing three of them for director Robert Rodriguez alone, including the pistolero-wielding bookstore owner in Desperado, the 1995 film that launched her in the States. “I love acting,” Hayek says with a dramatic sigh, “but I don’t take myself very seriously sometimes, and I also have a vision that goes beyond the limitations of what you can do as an actor.”
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