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Salma Hayek always wanted to do comedies, but was considered "too sexy" for it

2023-02-08T04:02:06.702Z


The 56-year-old actress has given an interview to 'GQ' magazine where she talks about the typecasting she has lived through for a good part of her career: "Not only were you not allowed to be intelligent, but you weren't allowed to be funny in the nineties″


This 2023 will be a good year for Salma Hayek.

At least professionally.

The 56-year-old actress, born in Coatzacoalcos (Mexico), co-stars, along with Channing Tatum, in the third installment of the successful

Magic Mike

saga , films that narrate the adventures of an erotic dancer who seeks to fulfill the American dream.

The third film is once again directed by Steven Soderbergh and is titled, by way of closure,

Magic Mike's Last Dance

.

She will also star in the drama

Without Blood

, directed by Angelina Jolie and based on the homonymous work by Italian writer Alessandro Baricco.

For these two reasons, the actress received journalist Olivia Pym from GQ

magazine in the living room of her house in Bel Air (Los Angeles, California).

, with whom he has opened up, without mincing words, about the biggest handicap he has faced throughout his career: being too sexy.

Although she was already a recognized actress in her native country, in the United States and in the rest of the world she became known for her work in From

Dusk Till Dawn

(1996), a vampire story set in a

strip club.

in Texas, where two fugitive brothers (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino) are hiding from the police en route to Mexico.

In the film, Salma Hayek plays an erotic dancer who is transformed into a vampire after performing a sensual dance with a snake on her shoulders.

A scene that soon became iconic, marking Hayek's career for years to come by turning it into one of the great erotic myths of the 1990s: “It was a very small role, but to my surprise, people remember that a lot. moment”, recalls the actress now.

More information

Salma Hayek's tears when seeing her "brown face" as a superhero in 'Eternals'

From that moment on, Hayek explains how he began receiving proposals to play

strippers

again, over and over again.

She appeared on the lists of the sexiest women and the most beautiful on the planet.

And she began to play sexy characters identified as "exotic", such as Rita Escobar in

Wild, Wild West,

Carolina in

El mexicano

or Sara Sandoval in

Bandidas

, together with Penélope Cruz: "I was pigeonholed for a long time", confesses the actress, “All my life I wanted to do comedy and people didn't give me comedy.

I couldn't get a comedic role until I met Adam Sandler, who cast me in a sitcom [

Grown Ups ].

, 2010], and I was already in my forties!”

The actress recounts that she was told: "You're sexy, so you can't have a sense of humor."

And she laments about those times: "Not only were you not allowed to be smart, you weren't allowed to be funny in the '90s either."

The interpreter acknowledges that, at that time, that typecasting of hers made her very sad: “I was sad.

But here I am now doing all genres, at a point in my life when I was told that I would no longer work, that I would be out of the industry.

So I'm not sad, I'm not angry.

Now I laugh."

Salma Hayek has worked hard to change the course of her career, both on and off the screen.

It was in 2002 when she embarked on a personal project that would lead her to obtain an Oscar nomination, the film

Frida

, where she gave life to the painter Frida Kahlo, a figure with whom the actress had been obsessed since she was a teenager. .

As the producer, as well as the protagonist, of the film, she played an important role in its development, directly contacting Kahlo's relatives and obtaining the rights to some of her works.

In the process, she also contacted Harvey Weinstein, then head of Miramax, who agreed to co-produce the film.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Salma Hayek Pinault (@salmahayek)

“Harvey Weinstein was a passionate movie buff, a daredevil, a patron of film talent, a loving father, and a monster.

For years, he was my monster, ”wrote the actress in an article published in 2017 in

The New York Times,

with which she joined the testimonies of other interpreters who had revealed the sexual abuse attempted or committed by one of the legendary producers of Hollywood, whose name is today synonymous with serial sexual predator.

Hayek explained in his text that he had not wanted to speak before because he did not consider his voice important after so many personalities had recounted his experience and because he had been omitting intimate details about him for years.

His account focused not so much on what happened to him when he was alone with Weinstein, but on describing in detail how a bullying situation between a powerful man and an aspiring actress-producer begins and develops.

According to his writing, once she began a professional relationship with Weinstein, the producer made his life an ordeal,

Finally, the film about Frida Kahlo was released, it was a critical success and earned Weinstein six Oscar nominations, of which he won two (Best Makeup and Best Score).

Salma Hayek ended her story with a reflection: “Why do so many of us, artists, women, have to go to war to be able to tell our stories when we have so much to offer?

Why do we have to fight tooth and nail to maintain dignity?

I think it's because, as women, we've been artistically devalued to a level of indecency, to the point that the film industry has stopped trying to figure out what female audiences want to see and what stories we want to tell."

In addition to getting involved in feminist issues, such as the Me Too movement, she has also fought for other social causes, such as the presence of Latinos in Hollywood.

In an interview promoting the Marvel movie,

Eternals

(2021)

,

where she plays the character of Ajax, she emotionally recognized the importance of seeing herself on screen, as a Latina, with a superhero costume: “I saw my brown face in the superhero costume, and when I saw my face, I saw your face, I saw my face as a girl, who had to have so much courage to dream big.

I saw the faces of all the girls.

I realized that a door had opened where I was not alone, but that all Latinos were in that suit together, that we have waited so long for this moment," Hayek said in an interview with the

Despierta América

program , on the Univisión network. .

With her role in

Magic Mike

, the woman who became known for doing a lap dance on screen feels that she has come full circle as she is now the woman who sees

male

strippers dance.

Being considered "the hot girl" no longer worries her: "I'm at a point in my life where I think my sexuality is no longer the only thing appreciated about me," she explains in

GQ

, "but if it were, I wouldn't care, because I've built enough respect around myself from the people who really matter that I feel seen beyond that."

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-02-08

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