Salma Hayek names her favourite film: “It made me want to be in the movies”
Actor Salma Hayek first came to our screens in the late 1980s and 1990s, beginning with the Mexican telenovela Teresa, before going on to play in a number of Hollywood productions, including Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado and From Dusk till Dawn, Wild Wild West and Dogma.
Hayek’s first big performance arguably came in 2002 when she portrayed the painter Frida Kahlo in Julie Taymor’s biopic Frida, which made her the first Mexican artist to get a ‘Best Actress’ Academy Award nomination. Several high-profile roles followed in pictures, such as Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
But just like any other creative working in the film industry, the desire to act had to begin somewhere, and for Hayek, it started way back in her childhood. In the book You Gotta See This, the actor told of her favourite movie and the story of how it changed her life.
“I’ll tell you a funny one that means so much to me,” Hayek began. “I just love the original Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. That film is what made me what to be in the movies. As a young girl, I sat watching this movie thinking that I could win a golden ticket and go into this world where anything and everything was possible!”
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory is the 1971 film directed by Mel Stuart and starring Gene Wilder in the lead role as the titular chocolatier. It is, of course, based on Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and remains a childhood favourite of several cinema fans across the world.
Stuart’s film had a big impact on Hayek, and it showed her the power of movies in creating new realities. “It made me realise that a river didn’t need to be made out of water, but it could be made out of the most delicious melt-in-your-mouth chocolate,” she said. “You didn’t really even need the golden tickets to find that river.”
The actor added, “All you needed was your own imagination. That movie was the first one that told me that I created any reality I wanted, and through my own mind, I could reinvent my own reality. I also learned that anything was possible at the movies.”
It was a powerful thing for Hayek to learn when she “was a little girl in Mexico”. She remembers walking out of the theatre, wholeheartedly believing that anything was possible. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I knew that it didn’t matter,” she said. “I could do it because Willy Wonka proved you could do it. Anyone could do it. That’s what a good movie can do for you. It can make you think that anything is possible.”
