In the latest issue of Lucky magazine actress Salma Hayek sits down to talk about many things actually. She speaks on moving to Paris with her husband and how he has inspired her. She also speaks on her early days as an actress with bad acne with no work and no money, developing her own skin care line, wishing she was more like friend and fellow actress Demi Moore and much more.
On Moving To Paris
Salma moved there three years ago, when she married French businessman François-Henri Pinault; they have a four-year-old, Valentina. “It’s nuts, how good the people look, too,” she says. “Nobody’s overweight, everybody’s well dressed, no tennis shoes—somehow, even though they walk all over the place, everyone manages to wear real shoes, nice shoes.”
On Having Bad Acne & Struggling As An Actress
When the editor compliments Salma on her glowing skin she responds with, “My skin?! When I was 25 and I left being a soap opera star in Mexico to go try to be a movie star in Hollywood and all of Mexico was laughing at me? And I could barely get work as an extra? You want to talk about bad skin? I had acne. And this acne was so bad, it sent me into a severe, severe depression. Like I couldn’t leave the house. I’d wake up in the morning and lie there and touch my face before I got up, just to prepare myself to look in the mirror! “The next stage with that sort of depression is food: too little, or too much. Guess what I did? I mean, I was fat and broken out, I couldn’t leave the house and I couldn’t pay the rent!” A friend, she says, saved her: “Alfonso Cuarón—amazing director—he came to the house. He did not play it down, he did not try to say, Oh you look fine. He said you can’t do this to yourself and taught me to meditate, relax. I got myself back together!” She also went on Accutane. “I didn’t want to, but it cured it. Since then my skin’s forever sensitive and dry.”
On Her Grandmother’s Remedies & Her Own Skin line Nuance
“She’d [her grandmother] take me with her to the pharmacy to get her materials. She knew what she was doing—she died at 96, with no wrinkles! Somewhere my grandmother is smiling. She believed in gentle things, so my serum has royal jelly, my cream has lavender. I’m especially proud of tepezcohuite, which they treat burn victims with in Mexico—I brought it to the chemists, who’d never seen it; that’s when you know you’ve got something new.”
Hayek created the line with CVS specifically because they were receptive to her ideas about formulas.
On Not Having Plastic Surgery
“Botox, trust me I’ve been tempted—but I resist! Think about what happens to your muscles—and your skin—if you’re sick and don’t move for a few days. It all atrophies! Plus, if you freeze a muscle in your face, other muscles have to compensate! And once you stop, what does that look like?”
On Staying In Shape & Wanting To Be Like Demi Moore
“I like to eat,” she sighs. “I’m always on the edge of how much can I eat without looking too—you know. If I eat something salty, it makes me want something sweet. I eat something sweet, then I want salty. And exercise is not my thing, though I do it. Not like Demi [Moore, her close friend]. She’s so disciplined, I wish I could be like that.
On Demi’s Recent Stint In Rehab
“You watch,” she says. “Demi will be back. She’s an inspiration to all women.”
How does she stay in shape? Hayek does something called Cooler Cleanse, involving fruit and vegetable juices. “But if you starve fat cells too much, your organs have to pay for it, starting with your skin, and it ages faster. Me, I have the other trouble! What you need is one black dress I call Plan B. It doesn’t have to be fabulous, it just looks good, covers up the problems and is neutral enough for dinner, business, a date, a funeral. You don’t overwear it, you don’t overwash it, because the Plan B is—gold.”
On Dressing For Her Husband
“If you’re in love with someone, you always want to conquer them anew. Even if we don’t go out, I like to look nice for him. He inspires me. There are men who don’t notice what you’re wearing, and that’s cool. But when you make an effort, François appreciates it so much.”
“He’s so funny—we were in line at the airport somewhere in the States with these four girls in front of us, and he asks me sincerely: ‘This American style, with the sweatpants and flip-flops … ?’ And the feminist is coming out in me and I’m like, ‘They’re comfortable! Is it such a sin to want to be comfortable?!’ But he says, ‘If they want to be so comfortable, why do they have so much makeup on at 7 am?’ And he has a point: People spend all this time with makeup and then not with clothes. Why? I mean, don’t think I don’t love the Juicy Couture—I do.”
Another thing they disagree on? How she chooses to wear her hair.
She points at her chic, low ponytail. “This is very Parisian. My husband, it’s funny, but he hates it when I have this Parisian hair! He loves my crazy-maniac-madwoman just-got-out-of-the-shower hair. He is like the lawyer for my thick, wild, natural hair. He’s like, ‘Why make it suffer?’ But you know for 45 years I’ve got this big hair, and these big boobs, and I’m this tiny person and sometimes—you just want to be … smaller.” She flips the ponytail, flashes her kohl-lined lashes. “He’s probably right—my mom always said, ‘You think you know better than God?’ ”
For more on Salma and her magazine spread over over to Lucky.
