Salma Hayek (Credit: Courtesy, self via Facebook)
Oscar-nominated actress and Emmy-winning filmmaker Salma Hayek is getting her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in honor of a career of nearly three decades in the world’s movie mecca. The actress of Frida, Eternals and the upcoming film House of Gucci will get her star in the category of motion pictures Friday, Nov. 19.
“Salma Hayek Pinault is hailed as one of the entertainment world’s most respected and sought-after actresses,” stated Ana Martinez, Walk of Fame producer. “It is our pleasure to honor this talented actress with her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”
Born in Coatzacoalcos, in the Mexican state of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico, Hayek started her acting in telenovelas in the late 1980s, including Nuevo Amanecer and Teresa. A few years later, she moved to Los Angeles to try to make it in Hollywood but also continued working in Mexico.
Initially, with limited English, she secured minor roles in various American TV series like Nurses and films like Mi Vida Loca. She starred in the 1994 Mexican film El Callejón de los Milagros, an adaptation of the novel Midaq Alley by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz which earned Hayek a nomination to the Ariel Awards, Mexico’s equivalent of the Oscars. The same year she broke into the U.S. film market with Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado and Antonio Banderas, followed by two other collaborations with the Mexican-American director and the Spanish actor–the horror flick From Dusk Til Dawn and the action drama Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
Other films would follow, including Showtime’s In the Time of the Butterflies, Fools Rush In, Dogma, Wild Wild West and Traffic.
Alfred Molina and Salma Hayek in Frida (Credit: Lions Gate Films)
Under her own production company Ventanarosa, Hayek starred in and produced Frida, the biopic about renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. She secured an all-star cast that featured Alfred Molina, Geoffrey Roy and Ashley Judd and acclaimed theater director Julie Taymor, as well as permission to film in Kahlo’s former studio. The film received six Academy Award nominations, including a Best Actress nod for Hayek. Her role as Kahlo also earned the Mexican actress best actress nominations for other coveted prizes such as the BAFTA Awards, Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards. Her portrayal of the famous painter also won Hayek Germany’s Golden Camera for Best International Actress.
In addition to Frida, Hayek produced ABC’s Golden Globe and Emmy-winning comedy Ugly Betty–which also earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress, and Showtime’s In The Time Of The Butterflies, for which she received a nomination for a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award. Other projects include the Netflix series Monarca and Showtime’s The Maldonado Miracle, marking her directorial debut and for which she won a Best Director Emmy.
Salma Hayek, center, and co-stars in Eternals (Credit: Disney)
She was also featured in the acclaimed NBC comedy series 30 Rock and has starred in several other films in recent years, including Puss in Boots, Savages, Beatriz at Dinner, How to Be a Latin Lover, Bliss and Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.
Currently, Hayek can be seen on the big screen in Eternals, the Marvel Comics superhero feature in which she plays Ajak, the leader of a group of genetically-engineered extraterrestrials who came to Earth. She also stars in the upcoming fashion drama House of Gucci, opposite Al Pacino, Jared Leto, Adam Driver, Lady Gaga and Jeremy Irons. Her role in this film as clairvoyant Pina Auriemma earned her an Independent Spirit Award nomination.
The Mexican actress has supported many causes throughout her career, such as women’s rights, children and immigrants. She lobbied the U.S. Congress to extend the Violence Against Women Act and later co-founded, with her husband Francois-Henri Pinault, The Kering Foundation, to help liberate women around the world from sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Hayek partnered with Gucci to create Chime for Change, a program advancing education, health and justice of girls and which launched the #StandWithWomen campaign to combat domestic violence against women during the coronavirus lockdowns.
Salma Hayek stars as Pina Auriemma in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, premiering Nov. 24. (Credit: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures)
In 2015, Hayek visited Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon alongside UNICEF and mounted the Chime for Education campaign to raise money to educate refugee children. Hayek is of Lebanese descent. Two years later, she spearheaded fundraising efforts for earthquake victims in Mexico and helped raise nearly a million dollars for UNICEF. During the disaster-relief effort, she also partnered with the Pepsico Foundation and Habitat for Humanity to deliver 180 houses for displaced victims of the quake. She is also a longtime supporter of various leading nonprofits like Girl Effect, which advocates for empowering girls worldwide, and Fondo Semillas, a nonprofit aiming to improve the lives of women and trans people in Mexico.
Hayek will get star number 2,709 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in front of the legendary Chinese Theatre Box Office, located at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard. The Nov. 19 ceremony is slated to start at 6 p.m. (PST). Joining the Eternals star in the unveiling of her star will be actor Adam Sandler, with whom she co-starred in the buddy comedy Grown Ups, and Marvel’s Eternals Academy Award winning Director Chloe Zhao.
The star unveiling ceremony can be watched on www.walkoffame.com
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