Salma Hayek’s Struggle as an Actress

Mexican bombshell, Salma Hayek, opens up to More magazine about her struggle to become a serious actress in Hollywood. get here. At age 23, Hayek was already a star on Mexican TV, as the title character on the Mexican soap “Teresa.”

Salma says even then she knew this was not all she wanted out of the acting. “I was smart enough to realize that was not good acting, and I wanted to be a really good actress,” she said, and she quit the gig to pursue her passion in Los Angeles.

This move resulted in Hayek having to start from the bottom again, and she says that she knew this would happen — she would be an unknown in Hollywood. “But I was not prepared to be rejected so many times and to be made fun of because I came from a Mexican soap opera. It was almost like, ‘How dare you think you can be an actress here?’ Like I was a stupid person for considering that possibility.”

Salma started out with small parts, making her film debut in 1993 in Mi Vida Loca, gradually increasing her profile with roles in Desperado, co-starring with Antonio Banderas, and from From Dusk Till Dawn. Fast forward to 2002, to the biopic of the life of Frida Kahlo, and we’re talking Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

Looking back now, she laughs at the experience: “God, we set them straight!” adding that she was also smart enough to understand there was an audience in the USA, over 40 million Latinos, who wanted to see her and other Latino actors and actresses – “to see themselves reflected.”