The movie scene that made Salma Hayek “very upset”
When we talk about some of the biggest global female actors in the industry, the Mexican-American icon Salma Hayek is certainly up there with the very best. Having collaborated with the likes of Robert Rodriguez, Oliver Stone, Steven Soderbergh, Chloé Zhao and Kevin Smith throughout her career, there are fewer individuals as influential in Hollywood than Hayek.
Rising to popularity in the late 1990s, thanks to director Robert Rodriguez, who cast the Mexican actor in two Hollywood movies Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn, Hayek quickly made a name for herself in the independent film circuit. After another Rodriguez collaboration in the form of 1998’s The Faculty, Hayek appeared side-by-side with Will Smith on the 1999 action flick Wild Wild West, finishing the decade as a bonafide star.
This was well and truly set in stone in 2003 when Hayek secured an Academy Award nomination for herself, thanks to her spectacular performance in Frida. Years later, Hayek would go from one of her most celebrated roles to one of her most forgettable ones, taking a job alongside Colin Farrell in the 2006 romance Ask the Dust, a tale that followed a Mexican woman whose romance with a wealthy American is confused by a hunky Italian.
Inevitably, the romance flick involved a make-out scene between the two leads, but Hayek wasn’t too keen on getting intimate during the making of the moment, with the pair having to perform in extremely cold conditions.
“It was freezing,” Hayek told Radio Free in an interview from 2006. Continuing, she noted it was “Freezing, unbearable, cold. And I got a little bit of hypothermia. They were really careful. We had to take special drinks that would keep our body heated. I mean, we had to prepare physically to do the scene because it was so cold…I act comfortable, but I was not. And as a matter of fact, I was really nervous because this is not the one scene that I wanted to do, you know, and it was cold”.
The cast of the film tried to quell Hayek’s fears, with the actor explaining: “So at one point, Colin came, started making jokes, and [I said], ‘I’m not in the mood right now! I’m really upset about this!’ I’m barking.
The Irish actor eventually managed to calm Hayek down and make her feel comfortable in the scene by stripping off his clothes himself. “Out he comes, butt-naked from the trailer, Hayek recalls, “jumping and doing ballet dance. And I started laughing…It was the most ridiculous thing. Everybody started laughing. And he did it to relax me, because I was really tense”.
Take a look at the scene in question from the movie below.
