Salma Hayek was born on September 2, 1966 in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico. Her father is of Lebanese descent and her mother is of Mexican/Spanish ancestry. After having seen Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) in a local movie theater, she decided she wanted to become an actress. At age 12, she was sent to the Academy of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans, Louisiana. After attending Mexico City’s prestigious university Universidad Iberoamericana, she felt ready to pursue acting seriously.
Hayek’s first screen appearance was in the television series in Un Nuevo Amanecer (1988), which earned her the TVyNovelas Award for Best Debut Actress. Televisa subsequently selected Hayek, who was 23 at the time, to play the title role in Teresa (1989–1991), a successful Mexican telenovela that made her a star in Mexico. The series ran for two years and 125 episodes, and earned her the 1990 TVyNovelas Award for Best Female Revelation.
Determined to pursue a film career in Hollywood, Hayek moved to Los Angeles in 1991 following the conclusion of Teresa. With limited fluency in English and dyslexia, she soon enrolled in English lessons and studied acting under Stella Adler.
"You know what? I knew more when I was 12, because I came to school here [in Texas] for two years,” she said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. “Then I went away for ten years and didn’t really practice. My English was limited to vacationing and not really engaging with Americans. I knew ‘shopping’ and ‘eating’ English – I could say ‘blue sweater,’ ‘crème brulée,’ and ‘Caesar salad’ – so I came here thinking I spoke English.”
She also recalled the struggle of trying to fight for her place in the industry as a famous actress coming from Mexico, citing moments of “desperation” and “anger.”
“I certainly had my moments of desperation, of anger, of self-pity, of self-deprecation,” Salma remarked. “Yet after a lot of struggling, I am finally working. I am beginning to make money. I am famous. And I say, ‘This is not what I wanted, either. It doesn’t feel good, either.’ And I go, ‘Why?’ Well, I am famous, doing movies that my agents want. People around me are saying, ‘This is what you need to do now so that you can get to do what you want later.’ And I say, ‘Well, this is not my dream, either. How scary!’ After all this work. So what’s my dream? I thought about this, and I wanted to do a different kind of movie. I wanted to have a voice, and it was okay if I wasn’t going to be so famous or so rich.”
She finally achieved her Hollywood breakthrough thanks to the one-two punch of Desperado (1995) opposite Antonio Banderas, and then From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).
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