Go 'figure' that sexy Salma

July 27, 1999

SULTRY Salma Hayek, who has become a major movie star since moving from her native Mexico to L.A. eight years ago, still obsesses about her figure. Most guys would say she's near-perfect, but Salma seems to have fallen for the dictates of the fashion crowd, many of whose members don't like women to look like women.

Hayek tells the July issue of Glamour magazine that when she was making "From Dusk to Dawn'' with George Clooney, she was embarrassed about having to dance, back to camera, in a bikini. "George, you have to promise you're not going to look,'' she told him. He crossed his heart and swore not to. But, "when I saw the movie, I saw that he was staring at my butt the whole time!''

Salma claims she was woefully naive when she arrived in America. "I thought I'll get there, I'll learn English, and in three or four months I'll be starring in big movies,'' she says. "I didn't take so many things into consideration. Like, for example, you have to be legal to work in this country. You have to get an agent - I didn't even know what an agent was!''

She says that at first, she was with men who made her dependent and miserable. "But then the smart business side of me that sees things in a clearer way would say, 'What the hell are you doing? You fight with this man every other week!' I knew it wasn't going to work, but I'd fool myself into thinking that it would. Do I sound like Woody Allen?''