Salma Hayek Pinault Is 'Confidently Insecure'

Photography CHARLIE GRAY
Styled by GAIA FRASCHINI

"You are so confidently insecure." Salma Hayek Pinault tells me that Channing Tatum, her Magic Mike’s Last Dance co-star, once made this observation about her. According to Hayek Pinault, who recalls this with a laugh, it’s accurate.

Since entering Hollywood in the 1990s after working on telenovelas in Mexico, Hayek Pinault, 58, has projected an intoxicating, inspiring confidence. But underneath that confidence is insecurity. Despite decades of successes—including roles like the Vampire Queen in From Dusk Till Dawn, an Oscar-nominated performance in Frida, a starring role in the rom-com Fools Rush In opposite Matthew Perry (one of her favorites), and a guest-starring role on the Emmys-darling 30 Rock—Hayek Pinault is a woman who has been hard at work her entire professional life. The Mexican actor has fought for inclusion, bolstering actors and entertainment centering Spanish-speaking characters. She was a producer on the American adaptation of Ugly Betty (she had “no doubt” it would be a huge hit, but still got pushback), and she has her own production company, Ventanarosa. Its latest project is a television series adaptation of the popular 1989 Mexican novel Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. It comes out on Max on November 3.

Set during the Mexican Revolution, the story follows a couple who are in love but cannot be together due to family traditions and obstacles. "One of the challenges was to adapt it to these times where those traditions don't exist anymore," she says. "There is an interest in how many ways women have been wronged throughout history," she says with a bit of a chuckle. Hayek Pinault is natural and funny—and naturally funny—with a somewhat twisted sense of humor. The longer you chat with her, the more Tatum’s observation makes sense. (It made sense to me after only five minutes.)

Although Hayek Pinault has seen some improvement, it’s still a struggle to get projects centering Mexican or Spanish-speaking characters made. Like Water for Chocolate, for example, was in the works for six years. "I tried to explain to the industry that they were missing out on a very important market that deserves to have some representation, since they have such a presence. There are 600 million Spanish-speaking people in the world. Then, there are some Latinos that don't even speak any Spanish, but they come from a Hispanic background, and they were not being taken into consideration," she says.

With Ventanarosa, founded with producing partner Jose Tamez in 1999, Hayek Pinault seeks projects ("little jewels," she calls them) that have a strong Latino identity that comes from Latino culture, but are ultimately universal. "We only do projects that we think are for all human beings, and the originality comes from the richness of that culture, but many other cultures are similar, and will identify with it. We try to do original projects that are for everyone. We don't try to isolate audiences and say, Oh, this is so intellectual. But we don't do cheap, over-commercialized projects either. We always look for originality and universality at the same time." Originality is vital to Hayek Pinault, though it has become increasingly difficult to sell in this era of Hollywood’s obsession with intellectual property, remakes, reboots, and more of the same. "Any time you bring up originality, they fight you," she says. "Even if it's not a Latino project, any time you try to offer originality, everybody panics." Hayek Pinault credits her success to never giving up, and calls Like Water for Chocolate a "miracle." "You don't understand all the things I had to do to get it on the air," she says. A Mexican film adaptation of Like Water for Chocolate was released in 1992.

"Any time you try to offer originality, everybody panics."

This fall, Hayek Pinault also stars as Nina in Without Blood, directed by Angelina Jolie, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September. The film, based on Italian writer Alessandro Baricco’s short novel of the same name, centers the individual trauma of the brutality of war. Nina has first-hand experience, having witnessed her father’s execution at a young age, and, throughout the movie, she confronts her trauma. Despite its challenging themes and material (“a lot of monologues”), Hayek Pinault describes it as one of the easiest jobs she has ever done. "This was the easiest time that I've ever had, just automatically memorizing lines without effort. It was so weird. At the beginning, it was a process because the first day after I went home, I had a breakdown because I had held those emotions for so long." For the role, Jolie encouraged Hayek Pinault to hold on to her emotions rather than let them go.

This pleasant—or, given the material, as pleasant as possible—experience on such an emotionally challenging film is thanks to Jolie, whom Hayek Pinault recalls meeting in passing years ago, as one does at industry events. But they didn’t get to know each other in earnest until filming Eternals, a 2021 Marvel film they were in together with "a huge group of people" [including Richard Madden, Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani, Kit Harington, Barry Keoghan, and Harry Styles]. When Hayek Pinault speaks of Jolie, she glows, and her voice is excited yet calm at the same time. "Slowly, and in a very authentic way, we really started seeing each other, not what other people see, as if we were in tune or something," she says. When the movie finished, they continued their friendship. "It's very real," she says, and not something she talks about often or displays on her Instagram grid. "It's something special. I can’t describe it, but I can see it in your eyes that you understand what I’m trying to say." What Hayek Pinault appears to admire most about Jolie is her fearlessness—she’s opinionated and unafraid to be brutally honest—which also happens to describe Hayek Pinault. 

Hayek Pinault calls Jolie a “generous” director and, several times, uses the word delicious to describe the experience of working on her set. Hayek Pinault and Jolie (who convinced convinced Hayek Pinault to star in the project) are both devoted mothers, too. Hayek Pinault has one child with her husband, French businessman and Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault, and she is stepmother to his three children. The couple, who married in 2009, have a family code of sorts: They will not spend more than two weeks at a time away from family (with some exceptions), which can be a "nightmare" for scheduling and starring in projects. Jolie adjusted, no problem. 

"It's really hard for us; we don't feel safe as women."

Unprompted, Hayek Pinault mentions Jolie’s treatment in the press. "I've never met somebody more misunderstood," she says. "I hear things that are so far away from reality. It's been kind of shocking to witness that." Hayek Pinault has, too, experienced falsehoods "many, many times." Too many to count, even. "There was a time a while ago when in Mexico, they said that I didn't know how to speak Spanish anymore, that I forgot my mother language. Meanwhile, in America, they’re saying, Can you get rid of the accent?"

Even before she was a public figure, Hayek Pinault devoted much of her time to charity work, specifically supporting victims of domestic violence. "It's really hard for us; we don't feel safe as women," she says. Her involvement in such work was "always automatic," something that's come naturally to her. Now, she and Pinault are on the board of the Kering Foundation, whose mission is to "eradicate gender-based violence." In September, the foundation hosted a gala, the Caring for Women dinner, in New York, attended by celebs including Kim Kardashian, Dakota Johnson, and Julianne Moore. For Hayek Pinault, it’s important that "95 percent" of this work is not done in front of the cameras. "I’m very strategic," she says. "I give myself an infrastructure for it. You don't see me talking about it on Instagram." Rather, her Instagram is a place for pure joy: bikini photos, moments from Paris Fashion Week (like a video of her with Harry Styles at the Valentino show), and behind-the-scenes photos from other events. Hayek Pinault shares a question with me that she’s often asked about her charity work, which always bothers her: She is asked if she ever personally experienced domestic violence, which she has not. When she says this, the follow-up question is why she is involved. "If you only get involved in the things that are self-serving, are you really getting involved?"

Hayek Pinault has always been outspoken and candid about the treatment of women in the entertainment industry and out, and about her experiences as a woman of color in the entertainment industry, which has always inspired her to champion others like her, including her best friend, Penélope Cruz, whom she took in when Cruz first came to Hollywood. In 2006, they starred in Bandidas together, and Hayek Pinnault tells me that she wants to work with Cruz again before she dies (with a laugh, of course). But Hayek Pinault has, at times, second-guessed her outspoken nature. “Afterwards I say, Oh my God, what have I done? But now I'm not so outspoken because now everybody is too outspoken,” she says. “Everybody's become so black-and-white,” she says, “so I keep my mouth shut. I find the conversations that have nothing to do with the real issues and everything to do with everyone having this desperation to have attention boring. A lot of people don't care as much as they think they care about the actual issues as much as they care about being right. It becomes about them. Frankly, there are issues that are so deep that I don't have this delusion. I've been doing this work for so long that my opinion isn’t going to change anything.” 

"I love my insecurity. I don't let it affect me or take me over. That's the secret."

In her free time, Hayek Pinault has been watching “a lot of bad stuff” [unspecified], because it's the only way she can relax. “The good stuff is work for me,” she says. If she watches something good, her brain is too activated; a producer brain, so to speak. “I am finding some comfort in mediocrity. I'm making mediocrity work for me.”

It's impossible to measure exactly the influence of Hayek Pinault’s work, both charitable and entertaining, but her fight for the inclusion of Latinos in the industry has had real results. Ugly Betty was a smash network hit that certainly sparked watercooler conversations, and since, more Latino-focused films and series—involving Hayek Pinault or not—have been made, including Jane the Virgin, Roma, and Coco. When I ask what she is insecure about, she doesn’t give an exact answer. But her success and influence might be one of the many things she feels insecure about—an all-too-common trait women know well. ”I have moments where I'm super-insecure about something, and then I bounce into a confident place. I love my insecurity,” she says. “I don't let it affect me or take me over. That's the secret. If I was not insecure, I would be arrogant and would never learn. Embracing your insecurities, it's part of being confident,” she says. “A lot of our insecurities come from a collective undermining of women. In time, you can stop feeling guilty for wondering if maybe you are extraordinary.”

HAIR: Mariana Padilla
MAKEUP: Angloma
MANICURE: Jessica Malige
PRODUCED BY: Joshua Glasgow
PHOTO ASSISTANTS: Garth McKee and Lautaro Ceglia
STYLING ASSISTANT: Nadia Gil