Salma Hayek's hometown, the torrid Gulf Coast port of
Coatzacoalcos, is one of Mexico's best and worst places to grow
up. A refining center for the state-owned oil monopoly,
Petroleos de Mexico (Pemex), it has traditionally boasted a
strong economy and a sturdy middle class. Hayek recalls a
sun-splashed childhood of coconut milk shakes and sweet pork
tacos, and a family affluent enough to send her to school in the
U.S. But she also remembers how Pemex defiled the city: chemical
spills are still as routine as tropical storms. The tarred local
beaches are often closed--one reason kids like Hayek attended
the endless parade of movie matinees that nurtured her love of
film. The contrasting views of home are still embedded in her
character.
"I'm proud to be Mexican, but we've been lied to a
bit too often by our government," Hayek says. "It's made me
realize that this system can sell people, especially women, a
lot of dreams they never get."
Obscure Coatzacoalcos (current pop.: 222,000) helped foster
Hayek's distrust of Mexico's authoritarian order, but it also
gave her the means and the education that helped her break away
and become the country's pre-eminent youth icon. Her almond-eyed
beauty--her father is Lebanese and her mother Mexican--as well
as her talent, her drive and an impressive array of professional
smarts have been the tools that turned a Mexican soap-opera
actress into one of Hollywood's hottest new leading ladies--a
true child of cross-cultural, cross-border exchange. At last
month's Guadalajara Film Festival, where she attended the Latin
American premiere of her film Fools Rush In, Hayek talked with
TIME about her sudden binational celebrity--and how she hopes to
use it. "When I got to Hollywood, being Mexican was considered
so uncool," she said, kicking off her high heels and propping
her feet on a table. "If I have my way, that's going to change."
Hayek has plenty of the defiant attitude that Mexican youngsters
call padre--very cool. She went to a Roman Catholic boarding
school in Louisiana, but the nuns tossed her out as a teen for
playing pranks. She then went to Mexico City to study
international relations and drama at the Universidad
Iberoamericana, and in 1989 was discovered by a telenovela (soap
opera) producer from the Televisa studios. She fast became one
of the country's biggest stars, but the frivolous dramas soon
bored her stiff. In 1991 she stunned fans by packing up once
again for the U.S., where she scrabbled on the margins of the
film world for three years, hustling bit parts and polishing her
English at Shakespearean workshops.
Hayek paid her Tinseltown dues. She endured the ethnic roles (a
Latina walk-on in 1994's Mi Vida Loca, the campy vampiress she
played in last year's From Dusk Till Dawn) and the sexism. "Men
running the show in Los Angeles can be just as chauvinistic as
the machos back in Mexico," she says. But teaming up with
Antonio Banderas in the 1995 action flick Desperado led to
better parts: producers admired Hayek's sexiness, to be sure,
but also her intelligent screen presence. Fools Rush In, a
cross-culture romance about a Mexican American who becomes
pregnant after a fling with a yuppie, is her first starring
role in a major U.S. studio film. Hayek liked the script in part
because "in the end the white guy learns Mexican family values."
Last month Hayek shone among Hollywood's elite at the Academy
Awards, presenting a best-song nominee. Days earlier, she beat
out Madonna to win the role of the enigmatic Mexican artist
Frida Kahlo--in the Trimark Pictures film Frida, which starts
shooting next fall.
But Hayek is still committed to making films back home. Three
years ago, she offered up her finest performance in Jorge Fons'
El Callejon de los Milagros (Miracle Alley), about the various
domestic dramas of a working-class Mexico City neighborhood.
Hayek won international acclaim as a barrio sweetheart turned
prostitute. She says she was drawn to the film for the frank
mirror it held up to Mexican society. "I want to support anyone
who has the b___s to make films like this in Mexico," she says.
Hayek is aware of her popular status as a standard-bearer of the
NAFTA generation and her image as a cigar-smoking free spirit,
but it is one role she is uncomfortable with. "I don't think I
represent them as much as I'm just part of them," she says. "We
shouldn't be bitter toward Mexico: our generation should be
about having the choices our parents didn't have, whether it's
politics or movies."
BY TIM PADGETT
