The actor Robert Rodriguez called the next Salma Hayek: “She is a revelation”
Being called the next big thing can be an albatross around the neck of any actor, but seeing as Robert Rodriguez was so instrumental in establishing Salma Hayek as a viable entity in Hollywood, he’s better qualified than most to pass judgment on the star who could follow in her footsteps.
Hayek only had two screen credits under her belt in her native Mexico before she decided to try her luck in America, but they were award-winning roles nonetheless. Wasting little time in conquering the telenovela, she was already seen as a local star with an incredibly bright future before she took her first steps into the world of cinema.
Her Stateside debut came with a minor role in writer and director Allison Anders’ 1993 coming-of-age drama Mi Vida Loca, but her next project partnered her up with Rodriguez for the first time when she took second billing behind David Arquette in the filmmaker’s made-for-TV movie Roadracers.
From there, she sizzled opposite Antonio Banderas in Rodriguez’s Desperado, took an uncredited part in his close friend Quentin Tarantino’s Four Rooms segment ‘The Man from Hollywood’ before gaining the most mainstream attention yet when she smouldered as Santanico Pandemonium in the aforementioned duo’s deranged cult classic From Dusk till Dawn.
She’d reunite with Rodriguez again on The Faculty, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, so if he wants to call anyone the second coming of Hayek, then he’s familiar enough with the Academy Award nominee to ensure it’s a comparison he isn’t just going to toss out with reckless abandon.
What makes it even more apt is that he was talking about the actor who literally replaced her as the sultry Santanico in the From Dusk till Dawn series. Like Hayek, Eiza González had hundreds upon hundreds of telenovela episodes under her belt, with Rodriguez there again giving the latter her first major part in an American production.
“It’s been wonderful new talent, finding the next Salma Hayek,” he told Katherine Tulich of his newly discovered star. Not that he disparagingly saw her as a like-for-like swap, though, with the multi-talented mogul confessing that “she is a revelation,” and she hasn’t done too badly for herself in the years since.
Most recently seen playing a leading role in one of the biggest shows on Netflix, 3 Body Problem star González has become something of an action star, collaborating with David Leitch on Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw, working with Michael Bay on Ambulance, and getting added to Guy Ritchie’s repertory on The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, In the Grey, and Fountain of Youth.
She even went full Hayek and re-teamed with Rodriguez on Alita: Battle Angel, even if the rising star has already shed those comparisons less than a decade into her American career.
