Salma is married to French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault, 50, with whom she has five year-old daughter, Valentina.
Here, she tells GARTH PEARCE how her mother encouraged her dreams.
MY mother, Diane, taught me to dream big. She had to put aside her own dreams. She wanted to become a singer, but it was looked down upon.
She told herself she was not good enough, so married and had children.
She did not want that kind of thing to happen to me so young and always encouraged me to take my opportunities. She also taught me to enjoy good food and to cook as you love — with joy and pleasure!
Also to think carefully before saying yes to a man.
I had men ask me to marry them and I would say things like, ‘But you are totally wrong for me — we fight every day’.
And I would point out that I did not have a career. A career of my own was something my mother always encouraged.
She would sing opera beautifully. She would find people in little towns in Mexico who didn’t even know opera existed. We would go to a restaurant and she would ask the waitress to sing the scales.
Di hopes ... Salma Hayek, right, with her encouraging mum Diane
They would go ‘la-la-la-la’ and she would be able to tell whether they would be natural singers. She even found one girl, Olivia Gorra, who eventually won an international opera competition.
I always had strong women in my life. My grandmother, Maria Luisa Lopez, was a talented poet and songwriter.
She was also interested in chemistry and could have become anything. But not in the Thirties. Instead, she was forced into an arranged marriage.
When she finally found the courage to leave her husband and move to Mexico City, she found it difficult to begin a career because there was so much prejudice against women.
I was fortunate because we were very comfortable, financially. It helped me have the courage to go to America to try and get into movies.
I arrived in Los Angeles at the age of 25 with very little English - I’d forgotten much that I had learned at about 12 - unable to drive, with no agent and not many ideas of how it was all going to work.
There was a lot of rejection.
I was also told, at one point, that my accent would remind people in Hollywood of their Mexican housekeepers!
Then the director, Robert Rodriguez, saw me on a Spanish-language TV talk show in 1992 and hired me for Desperado.
It was my first chance at an American film and I knew I had to take it.
In Desperado, I had great difficulty doing the love scene with Antonio Banderas. I actually cried. I didn’t want to be naked in front of a camera and kept on thinking, ‘What will my mother and father think about this?’
But when the movie came out the critics were saying, ‘Salma Hayek is a bombshell’.
I was confused because I thought they were saying that the movie had ‘bombed’, as in failed, and it was all my fault.
Cute ... baby Salma Hayek
After that, Robert and his producer wife, Elizabeth, hired me for other movies including From Dusk Till Dawn and I started to become well known.
My mother gave me confidence in myself. I thought I was pretty — not beautiful, but pretty. And I also knew that there were prettier women in every town.
I also knew that I had to watch my weight because I loved food and red wine so much. I had a lack of confidence at one point because I suffered from acne. It made me feel depressed, I did not go out and I ate too much food.
My mother was the one to say that I was fine and needed to relax more.
It was just a process to get out of that feeling and get rid of the acne. Some things are lost in translation.
I always knew that I would make it. When you say ‘make it’, in English, it means becoming a star.
To me, it means not to have great success, but to simply be able to do what you want in life. That is enough.
I read of other actresses admiring stars from the past.
But my mother is a star to me and I want as good a relationship with my daughter as I have with her.
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