Salma Hayek From Childhood To Hollywood

Salma Hayek had quite the interesting and well-traveled life as a kid before becoming the Hollywood A-lister she is today. According to Biography, Hayek was born in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico, the daughter of well-off Catholic parents. By the age of 12, she eventually moved to America, where she attended a convent school in Louisiana. During this time, she actually got kicked out for pulling pranks on her classmates. "They were not bad. They were funny little things," she later insisted to "Power Women Breakfast," explaining that she messed with the American girls who woke up early to do their hair and make-up. "So one day I decided to go in there and change all the alarm clocks an hour earlier. And they all were [up] at four in the morning, [when it's] dark outside, taking a shower."

While the "Frida" star was once very religious herself, she's shared that she's no longer Catholic because of the church's views on AIDS and sexuality. "The minute I started thinking it through, I realized all religions are a form of manipulation," Hayek told Marie Claire in 2007. "So I don't believe in the institution. I still believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in God."

Eventually, after returning to her native Mexico to briefly attend university, Hayek ditched her education to pursue an acting career. Keep reading to find out more about how Salma Hayek went from an expelled schoolgirl to a Tinseltown star.

Salma Hayek was in her early 20s when the TV soap "Teresa" made her a star in Mexico. As she later explained on "The Late Late Show with James Corden," it was tough to adjust to the fast-paced world of telenovelas. "When we do the soaps in Mexico, we have something in our ear called a "puntador," feeding you all the lines," Hayek recalled. "Sometimes they write them five minutes before you say them." The actors were also given their stage directions through the earpiece, which meant that they had to concentrate so they didn't end up delivering heartfelt lines like: "I love you, please never leave me, exit to the right."

Hayek was insecure about her talent at this stage of her career, as she admitted to The Oprah Magazine. "I was afraid I was a very bad actress, because I'd become famous very fast and was making money for people," she confessed. "When you're making money, they're never going to tell you whether you're good or bad. They don't care." The actor worried that she was letting down her fans by not delivering a solid performance, especially since she wasn't familiar with the world of telenovelas. "I didn't know how good it was that everybody was watching soap operas in Mexico," Hayek added. "My mother didn't even let me watch them, and I'm making one!"

In order to be cast in America, Salma Hayek had to overcome her dyslexia and take English lessons. And even after she became fluent, the actor was still told that her accent would make moviegoers think of their domestic staff. "I had never been discriminated against in my life; I was pretty and I was rich in Mexico," Hayek explained to The Oprah Magazine. "I'd tell the executives, 'Arnold Schwarzenegger has an accent.'" Director Ivan Reitman even stopped her from auditioning for a role, as she told The Guardian, because it wasn't written for a Latina woman. She waited around for five hours out of stubbornness, but the film producers told her agent: "Are you crazy? She's Mexican. We can change [the race of] the bimbo, but not the lead.'" Reitman apologized years later.

But despite these hurdles, Hayek was determined to overcome the misinformed stereotypes that casting directors forced on her. "I had a sense of purpose. Like I was supposed to do something," she later told the Evening Standard. "I couldn't sit back and just complain." The actor insisted that she "could see the reality of the percentage of the Latino popularity versus the percentage of the representation of the Latino population," but added that the situation had improved. "There was nobody when I got here and now there are so many more of us."

During her early years, Salma Hayek had to get creative with her red-carpet outfits.

As she told Vogue, the actor once appeared at a premiere with temporary butterfly tattoos across her collarbones because she didn't have access to any jewelry at the time and she wanted to spice up a plain black dress. "I was very proud actually to come up with something interesting," she stated. "Actually, at the very beginning of my career, I really struggled getting clothes, and I couldn't afford it on my own." This seemed like a pointed snub, compared to other actors of her generation. "The other girls were getting people to lend them clothes, but really, nobody thought a Mexican was going to stick around," Hayek explained. "So why give me a dress? But things have changed a lot." Describing other iconic looks from those years, she recalled "trying to struggle with the fact that I didn't have a lot of resources."

Hayek certainly hasn't struggled to find designer clothes since marrying Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault, however, and she told the Evening Standard that she now understands the business a lot better too. "I have so much more respect for the people involved in fashion," the actor insisted, praising the superhuman creativity it takes to put out a collection. "They have to be artists and be creative under such stress, expectation, and competition."

Salma Hayek first met Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault at an Italian gala in 2006, according to People, and she gave birth to their daughter Valentina in 2007 at age 41. 'Sometimes you find the love of your life at 16 and sometimes... you don't. Both have pros and cons," Hayek told the Evening Standard. "For me, I'm a better mother because I had my child later, but I think your child comes at the right time — when it's supposed to come for you."

Hayek later married Pinault in a small civil ceremony in 2009, as People reported, before later arranging a lavish star-studded wedding in Venice. "He's like no one I ever met before," Hayek gushed in an interview with The Guardian, observing that he hadn't lost any of his charm throughout their years as a married couple. "I'd met amazing men, but I don't know if anybody saw me as clearly as him. And I know who he is. Something about his soul, I don't know how to explain it, but it's pure."

Hayek has also insisted that she doesn't use her billionaire husband's money but pays for all of her own expenses. "Sometimes I struggle because I have a lot of expenses, but I like that sensation," she added. "It keeps me real."

Salma Hayek has a lot of rescue animals, including a pet owl named Kering after her billionaire husband François-Henri Pinault's brand. "I gave it to my husband as a Valentine's present," she told People. "And he was like, 'Well, thank you, but I know this is your own present for yourself.'"

In one appearance on "The Graham Norton Show," the actor recalled that she even pretended to have an affair just so her husband wouldn't get angry with her for taking in another desperate animal during a film shoot in Bulgaria. "I had promised my husband I was going to stop because at the time I had ten dogs, five parrots, I had alpacas, horses, cats," she explained, adding that they were often missing limbs and tails. Although they already had thirty rescued pets at that point, Hayek was won over when she met a "little puppy, who was abandoned and going to die." But she had one problem: how was she going to break the news to Pinault? 

The actor left him an ominous voicemail, planning to make him believe that she had cheated so that the dog didn't seem so bad in comparison. When they met, she begged him for mercy, insisting: "I feel so terrible ... I was so lonely here for so many days and you know, you do crazy things when you're in this state." He interrupted her and cut straight to the chase: "Please don't tell me you picked up another dog."