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SCINTILLATING
SALMA!
Good things, they say, come in small packages. Actress
SALMA HAYEK is one example. The 5’ 2" sultry,
hazel-eyed Latino bombshell, is not only blessed with
stunning looks, but has proved herself to be a volcano of
talent. Having made her
presence felt in Hollywood with Desperado, she is among
the fast-rising actresses with films like Fools Rush In, From Dusk Till Dawn
and the recent Wild Wild West to her credit...
The mere mention of her name has the men drooling and the women slighting their eyes with envy. Envy because in a very short time, Salma Hayek is scaling the popularity charts in Hollywood to become one of the sought-after actresses. The fact that Salma Hayek Internet Shrines have cropped up like weeds, explains the charishma of this beauty.
The daughter of a Lebanese-descended father and a Spanish-descended mother, Salma was born and raised in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico. Determined to see that her grandchild develop into a ravishing beauty, her grandmother frequently shaved young Salma’s head, and clipped her eyebrows, in the belief that such treatments would add body and sheen to her grand-daughter’s thick dark locks. Equally determined to see that she became well-educated, Salma’s staunchly Catholic parents shipped her off to a boarding school in Louisiana, when she was 12.
While Salma was both, studious and religious, she also displayed a mischievous streak, and at the receiving end of her tricks were the nuns who ran the school. Needless to say, Salma was suspended and carted back home after just two years. It only took Salma two more years to finish high school, and her mother, fearful of the effects "college boys" might have on her impressionable young daughter, sent her to Houston, where she lived with an aunt until her 17th birthday.
Returning to Mexico, Salma commenced her studies in international relations. Though she had harboured acting ambitions since childhood, Salma had, for years, been reluctant to seriously pursue such a vocation for fear of alienating her parents. But she couldn’t imagine herself as a stable-job girl, and ultimately confronted her parents about her aspiration. She revealed in an interview, "I asked my dad if he believed in destiny and he said, ’Yes.’ And I said, ‘Well, I believe it’s my destiny to become an actress’."
In spite of voluble objections from her family, and the disbelief of her friends, Salma determinedly embarked on an acting career. She initially worked in plays, which led to commercials, which in turn yielded a casting in teleserial. It was the title character of her second serial Teresa, that gave Salma phenomenal popularity and made her the most fanatically revered actress in Mexico.
Not content with being a celebrity only in Mexico, the pint-sized Latina set her confident sights on Hollywood. The fact that she would be a non-entity in Hollywood and could hardly speak English, didn’t deter Salma, who emigrated in 1991 to Los Angeles. There, she willingly plunged to the bottom of the heap in order to take a shot at conquering Hollywood.
Salma began taking intensive English lessons, and studied acting under the famed dramatician Stella Adler. Her first break came in 1993, when she spent four months auditioning for a lead role in Allison Anders’ girlz-’n’-the-hood drama Mi Vida Loca. Anders eventually cast another actress in the lead role, but Salma’s tenacity so impressed the director, that she gave her a smaller part in the film.
Other miniscule roles followed, mostly on television, but it was an appearance on a Spanish-language cable-access talk show that led to Salma’s big breakthrough in 1995. While in the process of planning a sequel to his wildly successful debut film, El Mariachi, Mexican-American director Robert Rodriguez happened to tune in to Salma’s talk show appearance. Mesmerised by the lovely and engaging actress, Rodriguez wasted no time tracking her down, and soon cast her as the female lead in his Desperado.
A big commercial success, Desperado won Salma rave reviews for her show-stopping performance. The diminutive dynamo ignited the screen with Antonio Banderas, and caught the attention of Hollywood, which resulted in a steady flow of film offers. Despite the fact she was disappointingly under-represented in her next two outings, in the limp thrillers Fair Game and Fled, Salma’s performances nevertheless provided much-needed boost for both projects. She made a good match with George Clooney in From Dusk ’Til Dawn. In 1997, the actress landed her first big role opposite Matthew Perry, in the cross-cultural romantic comedy Fools Rush In. TNT’s adaptation of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, in which she portrayed Esmerelda to Mandy Patinkin’s Quasimodo, is another film where she was the scene-stealer.
As far as her personal
life is concerned, Salma has declared that she will marry only when she finds
a man "who has more cojones than I do." While she’s seeing British actor
Edward Atterton, whom she met while making Hunchback..., the issue of the
quantity of his "cojones" remains in doubt, as the two have yet to wed.
Salma’s film career is definitely on the rise. Among her recent releases are the disco redux 54, and Wild Wild West, co-starring Will Smith and Kevin Kline. In the offing is Kevin Smith’s controversial Dogma, with Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon, and The Velocity Of Gary, a romantic comedy which teams her with Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio. But her most eagerly-awaited film is the one in which she portrays painter Frida Kahlo, in the bio-pic Frida.
Compiled
By Salma Khatib