‘She is an action character, but she’s still very much a woman’
Mexican star Salma Hayek is at the centre of the action in her new film, she tells Laura Harding
Salma Hayek is somewhat in shock at the idea she is becoming an action star at the age of 54.
The actress was already a household name in Mexico because of telenovelas when she first broke out in Hollywood in Desperado in 1995, and has since been nominated for an Oscar for her turn as Frida Kahlo in the 2002 film Frida, and had roles in films such as Savages, Grown Ups and Puss In Boots.
But she was amazed when she was told the sequel to the 2017 action comedy The Hitman’s Bodyguard, in which she only appeared for a couple of minutes, would put her at the centre of the frame, going toe-to-toe with Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson.
In The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard she reprises her role as the infamous international con artist Sonia Kincaid, the volatile wife of Jackson’s deadly hitman Darius Kincaid.
While the first film was essentially a two-hander between Reynolds, as the bodyguard of the title, and Jackson, the sequel expands the deadly duo to a trio as they get in over their heads in a sinister global plot.
But the capers are also accompanied by Sonia’s growing desire to become a mother, despite the fact she is facing menopause.
“I do think women are valued in a different way now than they were before,” Hayek says. “I was very lucky to have a director that really did something about it, that went with it.
“And I was also extra lucky because I was included in the process of the second movie and I thought that was very generous, but also very smart, because the problem with action films is it’s mostly men who do them.
“We managed to do a character that, even though she is an action character, she’s still very much a woman. It’s not like a woman trying to be a man, she isn’t trying to be a man at all.”
And this isn’t the only action film she has in the works.
Later this year she will make a foray into the world of superheroes, playing the leader of a group of immortals living on earth in the Marvel film Eternals, starring opposite Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden and Kit Harington.
This will be followed by a turn in the drama House Of Gucci, the eagerly anticipated film starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver, in which Hayek plays a clairvoyant who was convicted of helping Patrizia Reggiani orchestrate the killing of her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, an heir to the Gucci fashion empire.
In a way, Hayek, who is married to Kering CEO Francois-henri Pinault, with whom she shares daughter Valentina, 13, is having the kind of career in her 50s that she thought she would have 25 years ago, after her starmaking turn in Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado, opposite Antonio Banderas.
“At that time there were not many action movies with strong females being your own heroes. But it is incredibly surprising that it’s happening now. I just love it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
● The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is in cinemas now