Round 2000, Hayek founded film production company Ventanarosa, through which she produces film and television projects. In 1999 she co-starred in Will Smith’s big-budget Wild Wild West, and played a supporting role in Kevin Smith’s Dogma. In 2000 Hayek had an uncredited acting part opposite Benicio del Toro in Traffic. In 2003, she reprised her role from Desperado by appearing in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the final film of the Mariachi Trilogy. Hayek had a starring role opposite Matthew Perry in the 1997 romantic comedy Fools Rush In.
Hayek moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1991 to study acting under Stella Adler. She had limited fluency in English, and dyslexia. Robert Rodriguez, and his producer and then-wife, Elizabeth Avellan, soon gave Hayek a starring role opposite Antonio Banderas in 1995’s Desperado. She followed her role in Desperado with a brief role as a vampire queen in From Dusk till Dawn, in which she performed a table-top snake dance. For her performance, Hayek was nominated for an Ariel Award.
Her father, Sami Hayek Domínguez, is an oil company executive and owner of an industrial-equipment firm, who once ran for mayor of Coatzacoalcos. Her father is a Mexican of Lebanese descent, with his family being from the city Baabdat, Lebanon, a city Salma and her father visited in 2015 to promote her movie Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. Her mother is a Mexican mestiza of Amerindian and Spaniard descent, with her grandmother/maternal great-grandparents being from Spain. Raised in a wealthy, devout Roman Catholic family, she was sent to the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, USA, at the age of twelve. In school, she was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. She attended university in Mexico City, where she studied International Relations at the Universidad Iberoamericana.Īt the age of 23, Hayek landed the title role in Teresa (1989), a successful Mexican telenovela that made her a star in Mexico. In 1994, Hayek starred in the film El Callejón de los Milagros ( Miracle Alley), which has won more awards than any other movie in the history of Mexican cinema. Her younger brother, Sami (born 1972), is a furniture designer. Her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina, is an opera singer and talent scout. Hayek was born Salma Hayek Jiménez in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico. Hayek’s recent films include Grown Ups (2010), Puss in Boots (2011), Grown Ups 2 (2013), and Tale of Tales (2015).
She also guest-starred on the NBC comedy series 30 Rock from 2009 to 2013. She won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Children/Youth/Family Special in 2004 for The Maldonado Miracle and received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2007 after guest-starring in the ABC television comedy-drama Ugly Betty. This movie received widespread attention and was a critical and commercial success. Her breakthrough role was in the 2002 film Frida as Mexican painter Frida Kahlo for which she was nominated in the category of Best Actress for an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Golden Globe Award. In 1991 Hayek moved to Hollywood and came to prominence with roles in movies such as Desperado (1995), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Dogma (1999), and Wild Wild West (1999). She began her career in Mexico starring in the telenovela Teresa and starred in the film El Callejón de los Milagros ( Miracle Alley) for which she was nominated for an Ariel Award. Salma Hayek Jiménez de Pinault (born September 2, 1966), known professionally as Salma Hayek, is a Mexican-American film actress, producer, and former model.