Puss in Boots star Salma Hayek on racism in Hollywood and how Harry Styles finally made her cool

Salma Hayek reveals her first reaction to Puss in Boots co-star Antonio Banderas and why they ended up “screaming at each other”.

Spanish actor Antonio Banderas and US-Mexican actress Salma Hayek arrive for the New York premiere of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Picture: AFP

When Salma Hayek first broke into Hollywood from her native Mexico more than 25 years ago, her exotic accent was more a hindrance than a help.

Her first high-profile English language role was in Robert Rodriguez’s shoot-‘em-up neo-Western Desperado, opposite Antonio Banderas, who had made the move from Spain a few years earlier.

But where his smouldering looks, honeyed tones and European art-house film background were celebrated, Hayek found it more difficult to break out of oversexualised, spicy Latina typecasting.

Reflecting on her early years over Zoom call from her adopted home of Los Angeles, Hayek says she also found doors were slammed in her face because she sounded like producers’ maids.

“Antonio was European and was coming from the (Pedro) Almodovar films and there was a lot of cachet to that,” says Hayek.

“I was coming from Mexican soap opera. Somehow his accent was sexy and mysterious – he was Madonna’s favourite actor.

“And me, when I opened my mouth they would say ‘oh, no you sound like the help’. There was a different connotation with women and men, a different connotation to being Mexican than to being European from Spain.”

Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas at the New York premiere of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Picture: AFP

Nevertheless, Hayek and Banderas became firm friends and remain so to this day.

Since steaming up the screen in Desperado they have appeared in a further seven films together, including Frida, Spy Kids, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard and with voice roles in the animated hit Puss in Boots and its soon to be released sequel Puss In Boots: The Last Wish.

“He is my brother – he’s like a part of the family,” says Hayek.

“Sometimes we start screaming at each other and people think we are fighting because it’s in Spanish. We bark at each other – we might be saying the nicest things or be excited about something or discussing a movie and we will see people looking around on set all nervous that we are fighting and I’m like ‘what are you talking about – we were just very excited’. It’s really very comfortable.”

The first Puss in Boots – a spin-off from the hugely successful Shrek series – was released in 2011 with Banderas in the title role and Hayek voicing his rival-turned-love-interest Kitty Softpaws.

Returning to the role for the long-awaited sequel, was joy for Hayek, particularly as director Joel Crawford wanted to celebrate and accentuate Hayek’s Mexican culture and at last the accent that had once been a burden was now a boon.

“Now it’s a different time and he was so incredibly generous and he instigated it,” says Hayek of Crawford’s direction in the recording booth.

“He’d say ‘what about in Spanish? Come up with some joke in Spanish’ and it was so freeing to be able to do that where before we were stigmatised.

Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) in Animation’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

“For them to use our voices – when for us at the beginning if there was anything that limited us as actors, it was the accent. Now it’s our accent – maybe it is funny for the kids I guess – that is celebrated in some way.”

Hayek says that Valentina, her 15-year-old daughter with French billionaire businessman Francois-Henri Pinault was super into the first Puss in Boots film, but “she’s not into animation any more”.

Hayek says she’s going to make her watch The Last Wish regardless.

Having been subjected to countless animated films over and over as stepmother to Pinault’s three children, as well as with Valentina, she thought that she had “OD’d on animation”.

But she says that the visual style and emotional heft – as well as the laughs – mean that The Last Wish carries on the Shrek tradition of broad appeal, with multiple layers to satisfy adult and child viewers alike.

“I found myself being grabbed by it and I know my daughter and she will have the same experience,” says Hayek.

The new chapter – with Puss down to the last of his nine lives and finally understanding the meaning of fear and the inevitability of death – digs deep into the Grimm’s fairytales and skews a little darker than its predecessors.

Director Joel Crawford arrives at the New York premiere of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish last week. Picture: AFP

“That was our inspiration,” says director Crawford.

“They were used as a cautionary tale to take you somewhere to make you appreciate the light. We were very specific about where it dips into scary or dark, to make more that the overall feeling when you come out of it that you have been laughing most of the time – maybe you cried a little bit and maybe there were some happy tears in there as well – but the overall feeling is of joy.”

At 56, Hayek remains a little astonished at her recent detour into action blockbusters, first alongside Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson in The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard and then as the powerful goddess figure Ajak in Marvel’s Eternals.

Surely that makes her the coolest mother around then?

“Please tell her that,” says Hayek with a laugh.

“There is no kid in the world that thinks their parent is cool.”

Hayek says her celebrity is mostly an inconvenience in her daughter’s eyes.

“If there are new kids who are coming to the house, she’s like ‘please don’t come out of your room because these kids are not used to you being around and you are just going to ruin our reunion’,” says Hayek.

“Or I’ll be like ‘let’s go shopping’ and she says ‘oh no mum, we have very little time and I don’t want to stop for you to take 3000 selfies’. So she realised the good and the bad.”

There is however, the occasional redeeming moment that makes it all worthwhile.

“I was the coolest mum when she realised that Harry Styles for one second was in Eternals,” she says.

“He came over to the house a couple of times – and nothing will top that.”

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is in cinemas on Boxing Day.

Originally published as Puss in Boots star Salma Hayek on racism in Hollywood and how Harry Styles finally made her cool