Carolina’s first scene, where she stops traffic in a white blouse and skirt, is a much-used GIF on social media today. But she looks back on Desperado as the one that started it all.Ĭalling from her home, where she’s been spending quarantine with her husband, François-Henri Pinault, and their 13-year-old daughter Valentina, Hayek talks to about what she’s learned since Desperado, solidarity in Latinx representation, and what she’s doing to ensure a better future for the next generation. She went on to star in other hits like Rodriguez's From Dusk till Dawn, earned an Oscar nomination for Julie Taymor's Frida, and conquered television as an Emmy-nominated producer for shows including Ugly Betty. The role ultimately went to Hayek, of course, and it transformed her career. “She was part of the list, and I had to audition again.” “I remember Cameron Diaz was huge at the time and her last name was Diaz, so they said she can be Mexican,” Hayek says. She also faced the very racism she was determined to defeat. The studio asked Hayek, along with the many other Latina actresses vying for this rare opportunity, to audition multiple times and perform several screen tests. “I thought it was my friends making a joke,” Hayek says.Īs serendipitous as that phone call felt, especially at a moment when Hayek worried her dreams for American stardom were floundering, she still had to fight for the role. “The director is Mexican-American doing so well.” So, when she received Avellán’s early morning phone call the next day, she didn’t believe it. “Oh my god, this is my opportunity,” Hayek, 54, remembers thinking after their viewing. The funny thing was, Hayek and her friends had just watched El Mariachi, Rodriguez’s 1992 Spanish-language film that inspired Desperado, and it made Hayek hope to work with the filmmaker. rerun of Hayek’s interview and decided to offer her the role of Carolina, a Mexican bookstore owner dangerously entangled with a drug kingpin who’s also after her gunslinger lover (Antonio Banderas). Writer-director Robert Rodriguez and his then-wife, producer Elizabeth Avellán, caught a 3 a.m. Hayek reflects on this moment as she fondly remembers how she came to star in her first American film, Desperado, the cult classic that celebrated its 25 th anniversary in August. 'I'm going to change it,” she recalls telling him. It was a move that puzzled fans like comedian Paul Rodriguez, who invited her on his Univision talk show in 1992 to ask why she would take such a risk in an industry notorious for refusing to cast Latina actresses.

She was at the height of her career in her native Mexico, starring in the wildly successful soap opera Teresa, when she left it all behind to try to make it in Hollywood. Nearly 30 years ago, Salma Hayek made the decision to bet on herself.

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