As a nurse in her new movie Here Comes the Boom, Salma Hayek shows both her nurturing and playful sides, says Will Lawrence.
Academy Award nominee Salma Hayek has always had a playful streak. It stretches back to her childhood and her stint at a Catholic girls’ boarding school in Louisiana. She was a decent student, despite struggling with dyslexia – yet, she admits, “I had a moment or two, like every child does, when I told silly stories to my teachers.
“But I didn’t do anything really bad,” continues the 46-year-old actress, who rose to stardom in the wake of her Oscar-nominated performance as Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in the 2002 biopic Frida.
“They were really benign little things that you might do at a private boarding school where you have to entertain yourself and your peers.”
It comes as no surprise, perhaps, that her favourite film as child was the impish Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. “I look back fondly at that period of my life,” she recalls, “sometimes waking up in the middle of the night and making all the alarm clocks go off. We just did little things like that.”
Can she see that mischievous spark in her own child, I wonder? Hayek’s daughter, Valentina, has just turned five years old. “Definitely I can see it,” beams the Desperado star. So how does she react? “It’s funny, I think I am a strict mum sometimes but also quite relaxed.
“I am fun and I do a lot of things with my daughter,” she adds. “I talk to her and listen to her but I definitely set boundaries and I think my husband and I have a very good balance – sometimes he is easier and I am harder and sometimes vice versa.”
Hayek, who was born and raised in an affluent area of Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, says that she was delighted but also surprised when she conceived Valentina at the age of 40 without undergoing fertility treatment. Having a baby later in life, she says, has allowed her to raise her child in a more settled and contented environment. “It has been a very happy time,” she says, “and my husband is very sweet.”
Her husband is also quite well off. In 2009, Hayek married French magnate François-Henri Pinault, whose father Forbes ranks at No 59 on its list of billionaires, estimating the Pinault family fortune at $13 billion as of March this year.
Hayek, too, has plenty of business acumen, co-producing Frida before going on to produce her own directorial debut, TV movie The Maldonado Miracle, in 2003. Since 2006 she has been developing projects for ABC Studios that draw on Latin themes and talent, most notably serving as executive producer on the multi-award-winning series Ugly Betty, based on the Colombian series Yo Soy Betty, La Fea.
She also guest-starred in seven episodes of the show in 2006 and returned to primetime viewing in 2009 with a six-show turn on hit TV comedy 30 Rock. In addition, she recently lent her voice to the animated capers Puss In Boots and The Pirates! Band of Misfits.
Since the birth of her child, it seems, Hayek is embracing comedy like never before.
“I do love comedy,” she says, “and I particularly love improvising, but it is very hard to find the right people to spark with in that way.” She’s found a comedy muse in actor and producer Kevin James, however, who rose to fame on the back of the TV series The King of Queens, and with whom she starred in Adam Sandler’s bawdy 2010 ensemble Grown-Ups.
“Kevin was living right next door to us on Grown Ups,” she remembers. “The two families, my husband, his wife, and our kids are the same age. I really found him to be quite an amazing man and we were very funny together off screen.
“Later he said, ‘You will be in my next movie’, and he was true to his word. He called and said, ‘I am doing this film and I am writing you a part. Are you still up for it?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely.’” In fact, Hayek was so up for it, she said yes before she had read the script.
As it transpired, she had signed up for Here Comes the Boom, which tells the tale of a biology teacher and former college wrestler (James) who bids to raise money for his failing high school by moonlighting as a mixed martial arts fighter. Everyone thinks he is crazy, most of all the school nurse (Hayek), but as Scott endures his painful journey, the school (along with Hayek’s nurse) rallies behind him.
