Salma Hayek | Biography, Movies, TV Shows, & Facts (2024)

Salma Hayek (born September 2, 1966, Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico) is a Mexican American actress, director, and producer who, at the end of the 20th century, broke barriers as one of the first Latina actresses to establish a successful film career in the United States.

Hayek grew up in Mexico but attended Catholic school in New Orleans before enrolling at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. In the capital she was noticed by television producers who cast her in the Mexican daytime television drama Teresa (1989). In 1991 Hayek moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. After taking a small part in Mi vida loca (1993; My Crazy Life), she was noticed by director Robert Rodriguez, who cast her in Desperado (1995), alongside Antonio Banderas. Exposure in the action film catapulted the young actress into stardom. Her next major role was in another Rodriguez film, From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), a gory vampire movie that also starred George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino. In 1997 she appeared opposite Matthew Perry in the romantic comedy Fools Rush In and two years later portrayed an exotic dancer and muse in the religious satire Dogma (1999).

In 2002 Hayek both produced and starred in Frida, a biopic about the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including a best actress nod for Hayek. She also earned critical praise for her directorial debut, the television movie The Maldonado Miracle (2003). The inspirational drama, set in a struggling small town that becomes the site of an alleged miracle, earned Hayek an Emmy Award for outstanding direction. Hayek later became executive producer of the hit television series Ugly Betty (2006–10), a comedy starring America Ferrera as fashion-challenged Betty Suarez, assistant to the editor in chief of a fashion magazine. Hayek also had recurring roles on that show, in 2006–07, and on the sitcom 30 Rock, in 2009. Meanwhile, she continued to act in such films as Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), with Banderas and Johnny Depp; After the Sunset (2004); Ask the Dust (2006), based on the novel by John Fante; Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) alongside Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson; and Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (2009).

In 2007 Hayek and French business executive François-Henri Pinault (son of François Pinault) welcomed daughter Valentina Paloma Pinault, and the couple married in 2009. After costarring with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock in the comedy Grown Ups (2010), Hayek portrayed a ruthless drug kingpin in Oliver Stone’s Savages (2012) and the love interest for an aspiring mixed martial artist in the comedy Here Comes the Boom (2012). Hayek then controversially played a woman who must use violence to extract herself from sexual enslavement in the sanguinary action film Everly (2014). In Il racconto dei racconti (2015; Tale of Tales), an adaptation of a book of fairy tales by 17th-century author Giambattista Basile, she depicted a queen who impregnates herself by way of a magical ritual that requires her to eat the heart of a sea monster. She later appeared in a series of comedies that included How to Be a Latin Lover (2017), Beatriz at Dinner (2017), Drunk Parents (2018), and The Hummingbird Project (2018). In the action comedies The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017) and The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard (2021), Hayek played a woman married to an assassin. In 2023 she costarred with Channing Tatum in Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Steven Soderbergh’s dramedy about a male stripper.

Her credits from 2020 included the comedy Like a Boss, in which she portrayed a ruthless cosmetics titan, and The Roads Not Taken, about a man (played by Javier Bardem) imagining alternate lives. In the sci-fi dramedy Bliss (2021), Hayek was cast as a woman who believes the world is a computer simulation. Also in 2021 she starred as the immortal Ajak in Eternals, an action film that was part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In addition, Hayek lent her voice to several animated films, including Puss in Boots (2011), which featured Banderas in the title role, and The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012).

In 2011 Hayek partnered with convenience store CVS to launch a beauty line called Nuance Salma Hayek; it was discontinued in 2017.