14 DAY TRIAL // She may be one of the most beautiful women in the industry right now but, back when she was just getting started, she was anything but. In a new interview with Lucky, Salma Hayek recalls the hard times she had when she'd just moved from Mexico to Hollywood.
Now married to one of the richest and influential men in fashion, and a mother of one, Salma is also building her own beauty empire, using recipes she learned from her grandmother.
She died at 96 and had “no wrinkles,” Salma recalls. She can't say the same for herself, back when she was just 25.
Hayek moved from Mexico to the US in a bid to make in Hollywood. She came from a soap opera background and she truly believed she had it in her to become the next big thing.
Sadly, it was her own (bad) skin that worked against her at first.
“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?” Salma says, when the interviewer compliments her on her flawless skin.
“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!” she explains.
Because she could not control the state of her skin, she turned to food for comfort, which only made things worse.
“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!” Salma reveals.
She credits director Alfoso Cuarón for her career, because he helped her understand what she was doing to herself – and then gave her a proper shot in the movies.
“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!” says the actress.
Another important aide she had in the fight against acne was Accutane.
“I didn’t want to [use it], but it cured it. Since then my skin’s forever sensitive and dry,” Salma says.
It's for women with such an experience that she created her beauty line, using tips and tricks or even entire recipes that her grandmother passed on to her.
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