Salma Hayek

Salma Hayek is a Mexican-American actress, producer, and former model whose three-decade career produced multiple American film roles, including her Best Actress Academy Award nomination for Julie Taymor's Frida (2002). She was born Salma Hayek Jiménez on September 2, 1966, in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico. Her father Sami Hayek Domínguez was a Lebanese-Mexican businessman, and her mother Diana Jiménez Medina was a Mexican-Spanish-American opera singer.

Her Mexican TV career began with the 1989 Televisa telenovela Teresa (1989–1991) — which became one of the 1989–1990 Mexican telenovelas and made her one of the young Mexican TV stars of the early 1990s. She left Mexico for Los Angeles in 1991 to pursue an American film career. Her American film breakthrough came with Robert Rodriguez's Desperado (1995, opposite Antonio Banderas) — the mariachi sequel that established her as one of the young Latina-American actresses of the mid-1990s.

Her 2002 film Frida — directed by Julie Taymor and based on the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo — was an Hayek-produced project that she had developed across multiple years of failed studio pitching. The film earned her the 2003 Best Actress Academy Award nomination, making her the first Mexican actress nominated for Best Actress in Academy Awards history. Her parallel career as a film producer through her Ventanarosa production company (founded 1999) has produced multiple American films and TV series, including the 2006 ABC TV series Ugly Betty (2006–2010).

Her subsequent film career has included Bandidas (2006, opposite Penélope Cruz), Grown Ups (2010) and its 2013 sequel, Tale of Tales (2015), Like a Boss (2020), Marvel's Eternals (2021, in which she played the Eternals leader Ajak), and Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023, opposite Channing Tatum). She has been married to French billionaire François-Henri Pinault since 2009, and the couple has one daughter.

Her name Salma is from the Arabic Salma meaning "safe" or "peaceful" — anchored in Arabic-Muslim naming traditions. Salma has been continuously among the most-popular American girls' names for decades.