NEWS'I Was So Embarrassed That I Was Crying': Salma Hayek Reveals Trauma She Experienced While Shooting Sex Scene In 1995's 'Desperado'
Salma Hayek is one of the sexiest women in Hollywood — but she wasn’t alway so confident.
The 54-year-old got her big break in 1995, when she starred alongside Antonio Banderas in the second part of Robert Rodriguez’s Mexico Trilogy, Desperado.
During an appearance on the "Armchair Expert," the popular weekly podcast hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, the Mexican-American actress revealed she was so traumatized filming a sex scene at the time that she couldn’t stop crying on set.
The 54-year-old revealed that when she first accepted the role in Desperado, she didn’t know there was a love scene until production had begun. Agreeing to a closed set, Hayek — who was in her late 20s at the time — filmed the scene with just Banderas, Rodriguez and Rodriguez’s then-wife, producer Elizabeth Avellán, present.
"So, when we were going to start shooting, I started to sob," she said, adding she kept saying to the other three people, "I don't know that I can do it. I'm afraid."
“One of the things I was afraid of was Antonio — he was an absolute gentleman and so nice, and we’re still super close friends — but he was very free,” she continued. "It scared me that for him, it was like nothing. I started crying, and he was like, ‘Oh my God. You’re making me feel terrible.’ And I was so embarrassed that I was crying.”
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Hayek said she was so scared, she wouldn’t let go of the towel wrapped around her.
"They would try to make me laugh. I would take it off for two seconds and start crying again," she explained. "But we got through it. We did the best with what we could do at the time."
Eventually Hayek said she was able to get through the scene, but had to do so in quick cuts.
"When you're not you, then you can do it," she explained. "But I keep thinking of my father and my brother and 'Are they going to see it?' and 'Are they going to get teased?' Guys don't have that. Your father will be, 'Yeah! That's my son!'"
The brunette beauty finally did take her father and brother to see the film, but she said they left the theater during the scene and returned when it was over.
Despite the traumatic experience, the Oscar nominee made clear several times throughout the podcast that Rodriguez and Banderas "were amazing" during the process and that the director "never put pressure on me.”
