Published : 02 Sep 2026, 05:43 PM
Updated : 16 Sep 2026, 11:47 AM
Long before the awards nominations and magazine covers, Salma Hayek was fighting for a seat at a table Hollywood had not built for her.
The actor turns 60, capping a career that has taken her from Mexican telenovelas to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, by way of an Oscar nomination, a producing empire and some of the industry's most fraught reckonings with power.
Hayek began acting in Mexico, rising to prominence through the telenovela "Teresa" before relocating to Los Angeles to break into American film.
Early credits including "Desperado”, "From Dusk till Dawn" and "Wild Wild West" built her profile, though she has said the industry offered Latina actors a narrow range of roles.
In a 2017 interview with The Guardian, she described an industry with limited ideas of what Mexican and Latina women could play on screen.
Rather than accept those limits, she pushed for creative control, a decision that led to the film that would define her career.
‘Frida’ Changed Everything
Hayek spent years developing “Frida”, the 2002 biopic of painter Frida Kahlo, serving as both star and producer.
The film became an international success and earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress, making her the first Mexican actor nominated in the category.
For Hayek, the film's significance went beyond the nomination. It proved she could shape which stories about Mexican culture and powerful women reached the screen.
But the production later became tied to one of the darkest chapters of her career.
The Weinstein Allegations
In 2017, as allegations against Harvey Weinstein helped ignite the #MeToo movement, Hayek wrote an essay for The New York Times describing what she said she experienced while making “Frida”.
She alleged Weinstein sexually harassed her and subjected her to professional pressure and intimidation during production, including over a nude scene in the film. Weinstein has denied her allegations.
Her account became part of a wider reckoning in Hollywood, as numerous women came forward with allegations against powerful figures in the industry.
A Disputed Encounter With Trump
Years earlier, Hayek had another fraught brush with a man who would go on to become US president.
In an account she made public in 2017, Hayek said she met Donald Trump at an event while she was with her then-boyfriend, and that he later pursued her romantically.
She alleged that after she turned him down, a negative story about her appeared in the National Enquirer.
Trump has disputed her characterisation of events, saying she had initiated their interaction differently.
The account drew renewed attention during Trump's presidency, amid broader scrutiny of his past remarks about women.
Hayek also became an outspoken critic of Trump's rhetoric on immigration, particularly his proposed border wall and comments about Mexico and Mexican immigrants.
In an interview with The Guardian, she argued the rhetoric overlooked the contributions of Mexican workers to the American economy, framing questions of identity as personal rather than abstract, given her own path as a Mexican-born woman building a career in the US.
Beyond Acting
By the 2000s, Hayek had expanded into producing through her company Ventanarosa, backing projects including “Ugly Betty”, “Monarca”, “Santa Evita” and “Like Water for Chocolate”.
The shift gave her a hand in deciding which stories reached audiences, not just performing in them.
She has since moved fluidly across genres, joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in “Eternals”, appearing in “House of Gucci”, starring in “Magic Mike's Last Dance” and voicing Kitty Softpaws in “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”.
Fashion, Philanthropy
Off screen, Hayek has become a fixture on red carpets worldwide, known for moving between couture drama and understated glamour.
Her marriage to French businessman Francois-Henri Pinault, chairman and chief executive of Kering, has deepened her ties to the luxury fashion world, though associates say she has increasingly used her visibility on her own terms rather than as a function of the industry's gaze.
She has also worked with UNICEF and the Kering Foundation, which focuses on combating violence against women, extending a public profile that has long resisted being reduced to beauty alone.
Still Defining Herself
Hayek's story resists tidy packaging.
An industry that once tried to box her in as a Latina ingenue watched her become an Oscar-nominated performer, then a producer shaping her own material, then a fashion figure wielding the red carpet as a platform rather than a showcase.
The controversies involving Weinstein and Trump remain contested by the men involved, but Hayek has chosen to speak about them publicly rather than let them stay unspoken.
With acting, producing and advocacy all still in motion, her career suggests the next chapter may have less to do with proving herself and more to do with deciding, on her own terms, what comes next.
