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Even with a cold, Salma Hayek Pinault is calling the shots. She glides into the living room of the Los Angeles manor where we meet, looks around, and shakes her head. “Over here is much better, no?” she asks, as her team and I shuffle behind her to an adjacent space, one that’s shielded from the midmorning sun’s glare. Conscious of our close quarters, she requests a mask for me to wear, then cracks a glass door for some fresh air. While moving about, she politely requests some hot tea for her throat. At that moment Hayek Pinault’s white Swiss shepherd dog, Lobito, ambles into the room and settles alongside her platform shearling slippers (Gucci). An efficient two minutes later, we’re settled and ready to talk about sex.
Fine, not explicitly about sex, but more about the finely drawn concept of sexuality as it’s broached in her upcoming film Magic Mike’s Last Dance. In the third installment of director Steven Soderbergh’s critically and commercially successful stripper franchise, we’re introduced to Hayek Pinault’s Maxandra, a 50-something actor turned housewife whose life has just imploded due to her media-mogul husband’s infidelities. Upon meeting Mike (Channing Tatum), Maxandra reexamines her desires, both sexually and professionally.
“She’s a middle-aged woman who doesn’t want to get any older without knowing what her potential is,” Hayek Pinault, 56, says of her character. “I felt like a lot of women would identify with that.”
The character’s potential, it turns out, is something to behold. Seeking something to call her own (and maybe a little revenge), Max concocts a delightfully outlandish project: opening a strip show, directed by Mike, at a posh London theater owned by her estranged husband. Sexy, obviously, ensues.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Hayek Pinault’s casting in the franchise—one that’s grossed $285.6 million globally and spawned the Magic Mike Live Tour—is a return to her early films like Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn, in which her sex appeal was as much a draw as the gun-slinging action. Maxandra is absolutely a sensual role, especially in an opening dance sequence opposite Tatum that you have to see to believe, but this time Hayek Pinault’s character is not the sexual focus. That job belongs to Mike and the throng of gyrating male dancers he hires for the show. It’s a gender role reversal that isn’t lost on Hayek Pinault.
“I don’t know that I’ve worked with another man whose big bump in their career came out of a strip dance. For me, it was from Dusk Till Dawn,” she says, recalling her 1996 star-making role as the dancing vampire queen Santánico Pandemonium. “So, in that way, Channing and I were kindred spirits. I’m like, ‘Hey bro, I get you.’”
During the past three decades, Hayek Pinault has built the kind of Hollywood career that appears, from the outside, to be a one-in-a-million success story. Following an acclaimed run as the star of the Mexican telenovela Teresa, Hayek Pinault immigrated to the US in 1991, perfected her English, and spun a string of bombshell-type roles that were as memorable as they were sexy, including the tough-as-nails love interest to Antonio Banderas’s outlaw in Robert Rodriguez’s 1995 neo-Western action film Desperado (about which she recently shared her traumatic experience shooting a sex scene) and a literal angel from heaven in Kevin Smith’s 1999 fantasy-comedy Dogma alongside Ben Affleck and Matt Damon—into a bona fide acting career.
But it was 2002’s Frida, the movie that’s become almost mythic for its relentless pursuit of funding and red-tape cutting, that catapulted Hayek Pinault into the highest tier of celebrity. As both producer and star of the biopic, based on the life of legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, Hayek Pinault poured herself into all aspects of the production, which took nearly eight years to get off the ground. Critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination followed—though, as we learned during the height of the #MeToo movement, there was a dark side to the victories. In 2017, Hayek Pinault detailed her experience as a victim of harassment by Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood mogul, while working on Frida, in a powerful New York Times op-ed. In the piece she painted a vivid picture of a seemingly unrelenting David-and-Goliath-esque clash. But head-to-head, she ultimately prevailed.
More than 20 years later, she found Weinstein’s opposite in her Magic Mike collaborators: Tatum, Soderbergh, and the film’s writer, Reid Carolin. “They’re the kind of new type of man that really wants to understand: ‘What's the best way to be a man? What's the best way to support women?’” she says. “I felt so heard, seen, and respected.”
Even as she removes her claw clip from her hair and retreats into the hood of her black sweatsuit—a reminder that illness and lack of sleep have taken their toll—Hayek Pinault is still willing to talk about whatever topic I throw at her, including that of her relationship with her husband, French fashion tycoon François-Henri Pinault, with whom she shares a teenage daughter and three stepchildren. She is determined to dispel any of the misogynistic misconceptions about marriage and money that have been hurled in her direction over the years, and ones that might arise after the release of Magic Mike.
“That’s interesting you would think that,” she says, locking eyes with mine after I say I see some similarities, circumstantially, between her and her character Maxandra. Lest audiences jump to conclusions, though, she tells me Max is “exactly the opposite” of herself, especially when it comes to her marriage. “I have nothing in common with her, because I married a man who is very supportive, who saw things in me that I never even saw in myself.” I nod. “So I guess the only thing you’re picking up on is that there is money, but I didn’t marry my husband for money.” I’m still nodding. “And neither did Maxandra, by the way.”
Talking to Hayek Pinault in 2023, it’s clear she possesses a slightly otherworldly mix of confidence and polished professionalism, hallmarks of true movie stars, a dwindling class that counts Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Denzel Washington, and Julia Roberts among its members. Like them, Hayek Pinault has managed to maintain remarkable career longevity by staying true to who audiences want her to be. She could leave the industry, but she chooses to stay. Not because she needs Hollywood, as a 56-year-old woman, but because Hollywood needs more women like her.
Just over a week after our interview, the actor attends the Miami premiere of Magic Mike’s Last Dance in a fishnet Oscar de la Renta dress with floral appliqués, styled over black lingerie.
“I’m nervous about it,” she tells me of the look, for which she's in fittings around the time of our chat. A departure from her typical tulle and sparkle. “I might not wear it…but I’m surprised I looked good in it,” she says, without a trace of the self-deprecation typical of a younger generation.
She reenacts a conversation with her daughter, Valentina, during which she wondered whether the look was too sexy: “‘But honey, you see the belly, you see that I have a belly. And I don’t want to be sucking it in.’ And then I said, ‘You know what? Screw that. I’m 56, everything else looks good.’”
Glamour: Let’s talk about that first scene in Magic Mike’s Last Dance, the dance scene. It was so intimate. What was it like filming that? Did you use an intimacy coordinator?
Salma Hayek Pinault: Yeah, there was an intimacy coordinator, but the clothes were always on. I have to tell you, I was very nervous. I didn’t know what it was going to be like. But Channing was super comfortable: “Oh, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it.” And I’m like, “No, no. Worry about it!” But what I did underestimate is how physical it was. Channing’s doing most of the work, but girl, I was sore.
Do you find you have a lot in common with Max?
The part that I really feel a lot of women will have in common with her is this thing that happens when you come to a certain age. It’s like, “Is this it for me? Have I accomplished all my potential?” I think this is a common conflict. And it happens in your 20s, it happens in your 30s, it happens in your 40s. How old are you?
I’m 29.
Perfect age to talk about this. I remember having an existential crisis as I arrived in my 30s. It’s like, “Oh my God. I’m just not going to accomplish all my plans ever, it’s never going to happen for me. I have nothing, no husband, no children.” And you’re only 30! It’s so painful.
What advice would you give your 30-year-old self?
I would say, “Stop being melodramatic; you’re only 30.” And especially for the women of my generation, it was like, “If I don’t have a child in five minutes, I’m not going to be able to be a mother.” Now the clock is not as strict as we thought.
I would say, “Great things are coming your way. Do not settle for the wrong man.” That’s something I really thank myself for. And, “Do not listen to all these expiration dates that they give you.” Because I was also told that, as an actress, you kind of stop working around 30. Imagine? I did really feel it at the time, and it’s unfair. If I had said instead to myself, “Don’t worry, your best professional moments are going to be in your 50s,” I would have been devastated: “Oh my God, do I have to wait that long?” But it’ll happen.
Do you think Hollywood is changing for women, in terms of that expiration date?
In terms of Hollywood, yeah, it’s changing. But I do still think that, overall, women are still feeling the pressure of making sure they succeed in their 30s. In other businesses, for example, everybody is doing so many things so young; all the tech guys are becoming billionaires. And also, the world we’re living with, social media, we are more addicted to immediacy, and we’re losing the capacity to stay present and be patient. I do feel like young girls have a lot of pressure to succeed fast. I actually think they’re suffering more than my generation.
At one point Mike asks Max why things didn’t work out in her relationship, and she just says, “Because marriage.” What are your thoughts on her perspective?
I think that it’s very easy, when you’ve been with someone for a long time, to take each other for granted. Having a good marriage is one of the hardest things. I get a little bit nervous because for me it hasn’t even been that hard. It’s kind of like when something good happens to you and you’re waiting for the hit.
Yeah, for the other shoe to drop.
So, in a way, it’s good to be waiting for the shoe to drop because you’re like, “Better wake up, be on your game, and make it a little bit extra fun,” or something. It keeps you on your toes. I actually didn’t believe in marriage. I didn’t want to marry him. He tried for a long time, and I would say yes, and then I wouldn’t show up. And he didn’t go away when I didn’t show up, he had to stick around until we got it done. And I was terrified.
How do you keep your marriage from feeling boring?
Boredom is underestimated. I didn’t understand this for a long time. Also it helps that we met each other later in our lives. It’s okay just to do nothing and be together; sometimes sharing a space and doing your own thing in silence, with connectivity and thoughtfulness—“Can I bring you a cup of tea?”—is enough. It’s little simple things.
You had your first wedding ceremony on Valentine’s Day. Do you guys count that as your anniversary?
I didn’t even know I was getting married that day.
Wait, what?
It was like an intervention. I don’t think I ever told this story. No, they just took me to the court. My parents, my brother, they were all ganging up on me. I had a phobia of the marriage thing.
I knew that you had a courthouse wedding, I didn’t know that you didn’t know you were having a courthouse wedding.
The reason why it was a courthouse wedding was because they dragged me there.
You were cool with it, though, once it was going on?
I was nervous. And then after, there was a lunch at his parents’ house. My mother-in-law, who’s the most tasteful person when it comes to entertaining, had already been doing the lunch. I had no choice.
You couldn’t say no.
No! It was because I had said yes to the marriage, but I just wouldn’t actually show up on the day or do it. And then afterward I said, “Oh, it’s okay. I don’t feel any different.” And then a little bit later I said, “Okay, this is kind of exciting.” And he’s like, “Can we have a party now?”
And then you did the big ceremony in April.
We celebrate those two. When it comes to anniversaries, it’s fun and a surprise. I can cook, so he likes it when I cook. But I make it a surprise, something different, like the way I decorate. Or he takes me somewhere, or he hides the presents.
What is the most romantic gift you’ve ever received?
A daughter.
Is there any part of getting older that you thought would be different than it actually is?
Everything.
What do you mean by that?
I thought getting older meant I wasn’t going to work; I’m working. I thought getting older maybe meant that you’re not in love anymore; I’m in love. I don’t feel that I lost my flexibility or my agility or even my strength. I do have to say that I have found it beautiful, getting older with someone.
You’ve been working for more than three decades. When was the first time you thought, Okay, I’ve made it? Or, This is my own success?
In my career I’ve never thought in those terms so much, except for when I was very young. [Now] it’s more like a sense of gratitude that, “Hell, I’m still going. Shocker. I’m still here. They tried to get rid of me a thousand ways; I’m still here.” And it’s kind of like a laughter more than “I’ve made it.”
After you received your first paycheck in Hollywood, is there anything you splurged on?
After you get your first check, the first thing you do is go, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How come it’s so little after the taxes?” I had a lot of responsibility, so I’m not a big splurger; I’ve never been. For me, it’s more exciting to make the money than to spend it.
What’s one of your most inexpensive pleasures?
I play one stupid game, and I have to pay to get in the game. I feel very guilty when I play it. It’s like Candy Crush, but it’s not Candy Crush. I’m not going to advertise them, but guess what? I’m darn good at it. I’ve managed to understand what the algorithm is doing. I’m never going to beat it, but I always rank really high.
What’s an expensive pleasure?
I would spend a good buck on something sensorial. Diving. I’ve been diving for 46 years, but I don’t own my own stuff. I’m renting everywhere. I’m more into the experience. I don’t have to possess everything I love; that’s a good quality of mine.
You’ve spoken a lot about your friendships with Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Angelina Jolie—
I’ve always been a girls’ girl, and I’ve always been a good peer. Angelina is one of the very few friends that have actually hired me to work. And Mike White wrote something for me with Miguel Arteta. He’s always been one of the most interesting human beings I’ve come across. I saw that talent in the first go.
The next season of The White Lotus is coming up. Would you ever consider a—
I’m not in it. I know what you’re insinuating. It’s going to be amazing. He’s the very best.
How has your relationship to your sensuality changed as you’ve gotten older?
I work really hard and sometimes I’m really tired—I’m too tired to be sexy, to think sexy. And you have to say, “Oh, that’s okay too.”
Do you have any advice for women about embracing getting older, and embracing their sensuality as they get older?
I’ll give you lots of good advice about this. Dance—make sure you’re sensual for yourself. Dance by yourself when nobody’s watching. And don’t look at yourself in the mirror when you’re dancing. Blindfold yourself and feel you. Feel your body and feel how it interacts with space.
Don’t go over your problems when you’re taking a shower, when you’re taking a bath. Feel the water. If you get a chance to go in the ocean, go to the ocean. Walk on the sand; feel the grass under your toes. Feel the sun; feel the wind. Don’t get too busy in your head that you don't see it.
Have fun, laugh, make yourself laugh. Tell yourself a joke. Be silly when nobody’s watching. It’s about that time you spend with yourself. It’s hard for me to find that space, so I now make a really big effort to enjoy it very much. Because in modern life, it’s hard. Especially if you’re married and with children. Go hide somewhere and feel it.
Sam Reed is Glamour's senior entertainment editor.
Photographer: Lauren Dukoff | Styling: Carolina Orrico | Hair: Jennifer Yepez | Makeup: Sofia Tilbury | Manicure: Kimmie Kyees | Production: Ilona Klaver | Location: The Britely and Pendry Residences West Hollywood by Montage Hotels & Resorts
Special thanks to The Britely Social Club, a Los Angeles members-only club that opened in 2021, and the Pendry Residences West Hollywood by Montage Hotels & Resorts, a collection of unique private homes in the heart of West Hollywood.
