Salma Hayek 'scared' working with Javier Bardem in 'painful' The Roads Not Taken scenes
EXCLUSIVE: When Salma Hayak started out in Hollywood, actresses would be finished by age 40... but now she's 53 and having her best time ever - even with 'painful' scenes with intense actor and friend, Javier Bardem, in new film The Roads Not Taken
A mega-rich husband, looks to die for, a beautiful family and a hit movie career... Salma Hayek has it all.
And she’s the first to admit it.
But even though her French businessman husband Francois-Henri Pinault, 58, has £30billion in the bank, Salma insists she still needs a challenge.
At 53, the Mexican-born star says she’s in the prime of her life and still bagging roles that she would never have dreamt possible as a struggling 20-year-old.
That is down to two things – her own acting skills and Hollywood’s shifting attitude towards older women in films.
“Yes, I have it all,” says Salma, proudly. “But having it all means needing to have challenges. If you don’t have challenges, you’re just content and flat-lining your way through life. Sometimes the challenge is to find a passion for things when you have it all. You can never stop conquering yourself. You need to be always present and aware of what your challenges are every day.
“I’m 53 and couldn’t have picked a better time to have been born because I think there have been so many changes and I feel I’m part of these ongoing changes.
“I know there’s still a long road ahead, but I remember when I started out in my early 20s in Hollywood it was unimaginable then that a woman could still have an active career past 40. Then in recent years there’s been this explosion and I’m just glad to be part of this process now.”
Salma became a household name thanks to films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Wild Wild West and Lonely Hearts. Her breakthrough role was in the 2002 film Frida, as Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
In 2017, Salma alleged she had been harassed and abused by Harvey Weinstein during the production of Frida.
Salma left her family in Mexico to pursue a Hollywood career. It was tough, but she has no regrets.
She goes on: “I think about my acting career, of course I could have stayed in Mexico and gone on working in soap operas and continued working there, but I knew I had to leave and follow my dream and work in America.
“Even though it was very tough for me in my 20s to find work, because of my accent and because I was a Latina, eventually things worked out for me.
“I’m very happy with the path I chose and if I look at my life now I think that everything went in the right direction – even though many of my decisions were not that logical and don’t make sense to me when I look back on them!
“But somehow it took me to the place where I really wanted to be.”
In her new film, The Roads Not Taken, Salma stars opposite Javier Bardem.
Javier – famously intense on screen – plays a divorced writer with dementia and Salma is his high school sweetheart.
The pair have known each other for 15 years and Salma is best friends with his wife, Penelope Cruz.
She says working with Javier “scared” her – and reveals they didn’t speak for hours at a time.
She admits: “To be honest, it scared me. The story is very intense and our scenes go to very painful emotional spaces.
“As actors, we had to create this tense mood between each other and that was the most difficult part of making the movie for us because we both like each other. On our first day of shooting, we were both sitting in the make-up room and the atmosphere between us was completely different.
“We didn’t speak to each other – it was like we were meeting for the first time and over the next few weeks it was like I was discovering Javier as an actor for the first time.
“And you never saw any of the loving, personal friendship that we have in real life on the screen. That was really a challenge.”
She says Penelope feared the pair would act like playful children on set, adding: “She was worried that we would ruin the film because we were being so silly together!
“I’m best friends with Penelope. Sometimes when I need to talk to someone about the industry, I’m able to talk to her because she really understands me and my journey and what I’ve encountered because we’ve had similar journeys.”
Salma married Pinault – CEO of Kering, the parent company of brands such as Gucci and Alexander McQueen – in 2009. They have a daughter Valentina, 12, and live in London.
Salma says she’s learnt a lot from becoming a mother but needs to give her daughter some space.
She says: “I have to be careful not to be overly attentive and give her some time to be on her own because I always feel this need to be with her. But I think I have learnt a lot from raising Valentina and being a very conscientious mother.
“Being able to devote yourself to others and experience that sense of responsibility also allows you to grow as an individual because you are not so focused on your own needs.”
Salma says Valentina is talented and creative and is already showing signs of following her into movies.
“I think she would make a very good director, writer, or actress,” says the proud mum.
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