Salma Hayek Admits She Would Cry Herself To Sleep After Being Told She’s ‘Never Going To Make It’ In Hollywood

Salma Hayek can boast an incredibly successful career but she was originally told she wouldn’t make it in Hollywood.

The actress tells InStyle in a candid new interview: “Many people told me, ‘You’re no good, you’re never gonna make it.’

“What if I had listened to those idiots?” she asks, before correcting herself: “I did listen to them. I would cry myself to sleep and give up and then try again just a little bit—almost embarrassed to admit my dream of being an actress.”

Hayek talks about aging in Hollywood, saying that given “how much mileage I put on my body, and how much pressure and judgment I put on it, my body has been incredibly generous. I don’t think I am some hot tamale, but I know that for my age, for the lifestyle that I lived, I’m not doing too badly. And I attribute all of this to meditation.”

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The star then talks about her personal connection with her next project.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” she says, before explaining that she’s written a script for a movie she’s been hoping to direct for about 17 years.

“I’m highly dyslexic,” Hayek shares. “English is my second language, and I’m not a good writer. But this was too personal and too complicated for me to find a writer to do it, so I had to write it myself.”

Hayek is currently shopping it around and can’t reveal more details but says, “It’s a completely original script, and I emphasize ‘original.’ The problem is, it’s not a cheap movie.”

Hayek also discusses her marriage to François-Henri Pinault, telling the mag: “We understand each other really well. One friend said, ‘I cannot believe that, out of all of us, the one who cares the least about fashion is the one who landed that guy!’ So I told my husband this. He laughed and said, ‘That’s why you landed me.’”

Plus, the actress speaks out again about Harvey Weinstein, referencing her previous claims that he wouldn’t complete her dream project unless she filmed a lesbian sex scene alongside Ashley Judd; who has also accused Weinstein of sexual harassment.

Hayek says, “Some people got raped. It makes you wonder if you had said something [back then], would it have been different? How come I didn’t have the courage? But I dealt with it to the best of my ability at the time.”

“For me ‘Frida’ was a political statement, a social statement, a feminist statement,” Hayek says of getting the movie made despite Weinstein’s threats. “It was my way of screaming. And Harvey used my way of screaming to repress me even more. So I could not let him win.”

Read the full interview in the latest issue of InStyle, on sale June 11.