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 Entertainment | April 2007 
Hollywood Pays £50m for Some Latino Action
 John Harlow - timesonline.co.uk
| | The 40-year-old Hayek earned an Oscar nomination for playing the artist Frida Kahlo in Frida. |
The Mexican actress Salma Hayek is to receive £50m a year from a Hollywood studio to make films for America’s increasingly influential Latino audiences.
The 40-year-old Hayek, who shot to stardom as an outlaw’s moll in Desperado and earned an Oscar nomination for playing the artist Frida Kahlo in Frida, has already created the first “crossover” Latino television hit with her adaptation of the Colombian soap opera Ugly Betty, which is watched by millions in the United States and Britain.
At a time when studios are clamping down on big deals for stars, MGM is bankrolling Hayek’s plans to produce four films a year featuring Hispanic actors or themes. Hayek’s production company, Ventanarosa, or Pink Window, fulfils her ambition to open “a back door into Hollywood” for actors who have hitherto concealed their Hispanic identity.
For Hollywood, this is hardheaded business. Spanish-speaking families visit the cinema on average 10 times a year, compared with seven times for whites, and are growing richer more quickly than any other part of the population.
Hayek has always done things differently. Brought up in Veracruz, eastern Mexico, she was was “spoilt rotten” by her doting father, a Lebanese-born businessman who named her Salma, after the Arabic for calm. He eventually sent her to be “civilised” by nuns in Louisiana. But she was expelled after setting all the school’s clocks back three hours and causing chaos.
Dreams of becoming an Olympic gymnast were abandoned when, as a rowdy teenager, she saw Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory and set her heart on acting.
She dropped out of Mexico City University to become a sensation in a Mexican TV soap opera called Teresa. Trying to make her way in Hollywood, however, she found she had a choice of two roles: prostitute or maid. When she vented her frustrations on a television chat show, Hayek was spotted by the Texan cult film director Robert Rodriguez, who cast her as a voluptuous bookseller turned gunslinger in Desperado, his 1995 hit.
Hayek has built up a sizeable fortune by taking a share in her films and by endorsing cosmetics. She is engaged to François-Henri Pinault, 44, the multi-millionaire chairman of the French conglomerate PPR, which owns fashion brands such as Gucci, and is pregnant with their first child.
The 5ft 2in actress has said that neither marriage nor motherhood will get in the way of producing films that show Hispanic culture to the world.
In the golden age of Hollywood Hispanic actors had to hide their identities to win over middle America. Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Cansino and Anthony Quinn was born in Mexico but is still best known as Zorba the Greek.
There are 40m people living in the United States whose families came from south of the border, and their numbers are increasing fast. In some cities, including Los Angeles, they will soon be a majority.
For Hayek, tensions between her Hispanic roots and Hollywood ambitions have been soothed with success. “Good stories with interesting people will sell, whether the stars’ eyes are blue or brown,” she said recently. “But it helps if you have money behind you to get the story told well.” |
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