Salma Hayek lashes out at Hollywood for treating women like monkeys >HOLLYWOOD

Salma Hayek has lashed out at Hollywood saying the system treats actresses like performing monkeys and wants rid of them once they realise they are smart.

The Mexican star of Frida and Desperado lambasted the “macho” attitudes of Tinseltown, where fewer than seven per cent of films are made by women.

“Hollywood is not going to change and give it to women because it is all guys,” the actress said.

“From the beginning I realised I wasn’t being treated equally as an actress,” she said during a talk at the Cannes film festival.

“It is true that maybe if you are pretty you can get parts easier but it’s really violent to assume if you are pretty you are stupid.

“Hollywood’s particularly macho. If they realise that you are smart, their anger gets multiplied,” Hayek said.

To many movers and shakers young actresses are playthings, she claimed.

“They say ‘Get a monkey’ and then the monkey talks and they say, ‘Oh my God, maybe we are going to make money.’ Then one day they see the monkey doing algebra and they say, ‘Kill the monkey!’

“It’s very violent, this natural force to try to suppress. That is why we have a problem with women behind the camera as directors and producers,” she told one of the Women in Motion forums she organises each year at the festival.

Despite being a soap star in Mexico, Hayek’s climb up the Hollywood ladder was far from easy.

“Imagine, I came not only as a woman to Hollywood but as a Mexican Arab. People would laugh at me for having the dream of being able to work in Hollywood,” said the actor, whose father is Lebanese.

“I was the only Mexican or Latino in the drama school except for Benicio Del Toro, who is Puerto Rican, so kind of American, and he’s a man. And nobody laughed at him. They were laughing at me in Mexico too for having the idea of trying to break into that market. For every single agent and every single studio, it was a laughable concept.”

Hayek said Hollywood had disregarded and disrespected the female market.

She blamed movie executives’ “ignorance” for failing to properly play to the female demographic.

Imagine, I came not only as a woman to Hollywood but as a Mexican Arab. People would laugh at me for having the dream of being able to work in Hollywood.” Salma Hayek