Īfter taking a small part in the 1993 film Mi vida loca, she was noticed by director Robert Rodriguez and his co-producer and then-wife, Elizabeth Avellan, soon gave Hayek a starring role opposite Antonio Banderas in 1995's Desperado. For her performance, Hayek was nominated for an Ariel Award.
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. In 1991, Hayek moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film career in Hollywood, and to study acting under Stella Adler, having limited fluency in English and dyslexia.
Career Late 1980s–1990s: Early workĪt the age of 23, Hayek landed the title role in Teresa (1989), a successful Mexican telenovela that made her a star in Mexico. In a 2011 interview with V magazine, Hayek mentioned that she was once an illegal immigrant in the United States, although it was not for a long period of time.
She attended university at the Universidad Iberoamericana where she studied international relations. In school, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. Hayek was raised in a wealthy, devout Catholic family, and at age 12 opted to attend the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. Her younger brother, Sami (born 1972), is a furniture designer. In an interview in 2015 with Un Nuevo Día while visiting Madrid, Hayek described herself as fifty-percent Lebanese and fifty-percent Spanish, stating that her grandmother/maternal great-grandparents were from Spain. Her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina, is an opera singer and talent scout, and is a Mexican of Spanish descent. He owns an industrial-equipment firm and is an oil company executive in Mexico, who once ran for mayor of Coatzacoalcos. Her father, Sami Hayek Domínguez, is a Lebanese Mexican, with his ancestors hailing from the city of Baabdat, Lebanon, a city Salma and her father visited in 2015 to promote her movie Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. Salma Hayek Jiménez was born in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico.
She also guest-starred on the NBC comedy series 30 Rock from 2009 to 2013. Hayek won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Children/Youth/Family Special for The Maldonado Miracle in 2004, and received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series after guest-starring in the ABC television comedy-drama Ugly Betty in 2007. The film was widely praised and became a critical and commercial success. For her performance, she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first Mexican actress nominated in that category, in addition to nominations for the Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and British Academy Film Award for Best Actress. Hayek became well known after her role in the 2002 biographical film Frida, a film which she co-produced and starred in as Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. She rose to prominence with appearances in films such as Desperado (1995), From Dusk till Dawn (1996), Wild Wild West, and Dogma (both 1999). She began her career in Mexico starring in the 1989 telenovela Teresa, as well as the 1995 film El Callejón de los Milagros ( Miracle Alley), for which she received an Ariel Award nomination. Salma Hayek Pinault ( / ˈ h aɪ ɛ k/ Spanish: born Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez September 2, 1966) is a Mexican and American actress and film producer.