Salma Hayek laid into sexism on Tuesday, saying Hollywood treats actresses like performing monkeys and wants to be rid of them once they realise they are smart.
The star of Frida and Desperado lambasted the “macho” attitudes of Tinseltown, where fewer than 7% of films are made by women. “Hollywood is not going to change because it is all guys,” she said. “From the beginning, I realised I wasn’t being treated equally,” she said during a talk at the Cannes Film Festival. “Maybe if you are pretty you can get parts easier but it’s really violent to assume if you’re pretty, you’re stupid. If Hollywood realises that you’re smart, their anger gets multiplied.”
Hayek’s journey through Hollywood was not easy. “Imagine I came not only as a woman but as a Mexican-Arab. People would laugh at me,” said the actor. “I was the only Mexican or Latino in drama school except for Benicio Del Toro, who is Puerto Rican, so kind of American, and he’s a man. Nobody laughed at him. They were laughing at me in Mexico too, for trying to break into Hollywood.”
Hayek said Hollywood had disregarded and disrespected women. “They haven’t realised women are a great economic power, they’re a huge audience. We have been neglected for so long they don’t know what we want to watch,” she stated. “We don’t even know because we always think of who we will be watching the movie with – the husband, the family, the children.”
The superstar blamed movie executives for failing to play to the female demographic. “Today, 80% of the decision-makers of what movie or television shows to watch are female. Women work, make money and want to have fun but they have not capitalised on that.”
Hayek she did not spare Cannes even. “In the 70 years of the Cannes Film Festival, only one female has ever won the Palme d’Or and she only got half the Palme d’Or, not even a full one. She had to share it with a Chinese man,” she said.
