Salma Hayek

Salma Valgarma Hayek Pinault (born September 2, 1966) is a Mexican and American actress and producer. She first gained attention in Mexico playing the lead in the telenovela *Teresa* (1989–1991) and starring in the romantic drama *Midaq Alley* (1995). She then broke into Hollywood with roles in *Desperado* (1995), *From Dusk till Dawn* (1996), *Wild Wild West* (1999), and *Dogma* (1999).

Her performance as painter Frida Kahlo in the biopic *Frida* (2002), which she also produced, earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress—making her the first Mexican actress to receive that honor. Afterward, she focused more on producing while appearing in action films like *Once Upon a Time in Mexico* (2003), *After the Sunset* (2004), and *Bandidas* (2006). She found commercial success in comedies such as *Grown Ups* (2010), *Grown Ups 2* (2013), and *The Hitman's Bodyguard* (2017), and voiced characters in the animated features *Puss in Boots* (2011), *Sausage Party* (2016), and *Puss in Boots: The Last Wish* (2022). She received critical praise for her dramatic roles in *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 became her highest-grossing live-action movie.

Her work in television as a director, producer, and actress has brought her four Emmy Award nominations. She won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Children’s Special for *The Maldonado Miracle* (2004) and received two Primetime Emmy nominations—one for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series and another for Outstanding Comedy Series—for her role on the ABC comedy-drama *Ugly Betty* (2006–2010). She also produced and starred as Minerva Mirabal in the Showtime film *In the Time of the Butterflies* (2001) and appeared as a guest on the NBC comedy *30 Rock* (2009–2013).

Hayek is often described by media outlets as one of Hollywood’s most powerful and influential Latina actresses and as one of the world’s most beautiful women. *Time* magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023. In 2021, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is married to business magnate François-Henri Pinault, and they have a daughter.

She was born in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico. Her father, Sami Hayek Domínguez, is of Lebanese descent, with ancestors from the city of Baabdat, Lebanon—a place she visited with him in 2015 to promote her film *The Prophet*. He owns an industrial-equipment firm, works as an oil company executive in Mexico, and once ran for mayor of Coatzacoalcos. Her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina, is an opera singer and talent scout of Spanish descent. In a 2015 interview in Madrid, Hayek described herself as half Lebanese and half Spanish, noting that her grandmother and maternal great-grandparents were from Spain. Her younger brother, Sami, is a furniture designer.

Raised in a wealthy, devout Catholic family, she attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, at age 12. While there, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. She later studied international relations at the Universidad Iberoamericana. In a 2011 interview, she mentioned that she had briefly been an illegal immigrant in the United States.

Her first screen role was on the television series *Un Nuevo Amanecer* (1988), for which she won the TVyNovelas Award for Best Debut Actress. Televisa then cast her, at age 23, as the lead in *Teresa* (1989–1991), a successful telenovela that ran for 125 episodes and made her a star in Mexico, earning her the 1990 TVyNovelas Award for Best Female Revelation.

Determined to work in Hollywood, she moved to Los Angeles in 1991 after *Teresa* ended. With limited English and dyslexia, she took English lessons and studied acting under Stella Adler. She struggled to find roles, recalling that there were few parts for Latin women and that she was once told her accent would make audiences think of housekeepers. She landed guest spots on *Dream On* (1992) and *The Sinbad Show* (1993), as well as supporting roles in the drama *Mi Vida Loca* (1993) and the thriller *Roadracers* (1994), her first collaboration with director Robert Rodriguez.

In 1994, she played Alma, a poverty-stricken woman who becomes a sex worker, in Jorge Fons’s drama *El callejón de los milagros* (*Midaq Alley*), based on Naguib Mahfouz’s novel. The film was critically acclaimed, reportedly winning more awards than any other in Mexican cinema history, and earned her an Ariel Award nomination for Best Actress. She was one of the few actresses allowed to work for both Televisa and TV Azteca, thanks to a special dispensation from Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, who tried to persuade her to return to Mexico with an exclusive deal—an offer she declined to pursue her Hollywood career.

In 1995, Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellan cast her opposite Antonio Banderas as Carolina in *Desperado*, her breakout film. She described the audition process as grueling, requiring multiple tries before landing the part.