A sexy celebrity idol in her native Mexico, Hayek immigrated in 1991 to Los Angeles, where she eagerly jumped to the bottom of the pile in order to get a chance at winning Hollywood. Rigorous lessons, both in English and acting, paid attractive dividends in 1995, when the little dynamo started a fire under Antonio Banderas in genius director Robert Rodriguez's drama "Desperado". 

Continuing to find sexy co-stars, Hayek hit paydirt with a Baldwin brother in both "Fair Game" with Cindy Crawford and "Fled", and made an zombie sex slave out of George Clooney in "From Dusk 'Til Dawn". Salma Hayek Internet sites started up like weeds, and in 1997 the hot celebrity landed her first lead role in the United States, playing opposite Friends pet Matthew Perry in the cultural romantic comedy "Fools Rush In" where after a one night stand with, she realizes that she is pregnant and decide to get married. However, along with the marriage comes compromise of one's own cultural traditions..

The daughter of a Lebanese father and a Spanish mother, Hayek was born and raised in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico. Determined to see that her grandchild grew into a ravishing beauty, her grandmother often shaved young Salma's head and clipped her eyebrows, in the belief that such tactics would add body and sheen to her granddaughter's thick black hair. 

Equally determined to see that she became well educated, Hayek's faithfully Catholic parents sent her to a boarding school in Louisiana when she was twelve years old. While the charming young teen proved both politely studious and appropriately religious, she also displayed a flair for monkey business that she mainly directed against the suffering nuns who ran the school. The end result was that Hayek ended up getting suspended and shipped back home after just two years. It only took her two more years to finish high school, and her mother, scared of the effects "young boys'' would have on her sensitive young daughter, sent Hayek to Houston, where she lived with an aunt until her 18th birthday.

Returning to Mexico, Hayek moved to Mexico City to attend college where she started international relations studies. Though she had expressed acting ambitions since childhood, Hayek had for years been hesitant to seriously chase such a perilous profession for fear of alienating her parents. Ultimately, she decided the course of the faithful daughter and stable career woman was one she could not risk and openly confronted her parents about her desire. As she later told one interviewer, ''One day I took my dad to lunch. I asked him if he believed in destiny and he said, 'Yes.' And I said, 'Well, I believe it's my destiny to become an actress."

In spite of objections from her family and the ridicule and doubt of her friends, Hayek quit college and firmly started on an acting career. She first found roles in plays at neighborhood theaters, including one role as the hero of Aladdin and His Marvelous Lamp. Many months of determined stage work led to roles in television commercials, which in turn yielded a casting in Nuevo Amanecer, a popular daytime television serial. With no more experience than that to her credit, Hayek was cast as the title character of a second serial "Teresa", the exceptional recognition of which almost at once made its eye-catching young star the most devotedly admired actress in Mexico.

Not content to settle for the relatively skimpy rewards of superstardom, Mexican-style, Hayek set her goals on Hollywood, and moved north in 1991. What followed was a difficult period of fine-tuning, beginning with an 18-month break from acting that was chiefly occupied with English lessons. 

Hayek's first big break came in 1993, when she spent five months auditioning for a leading role in Allison Anders's bad girls drama "Mi Vida Loca". Anders eventually cast another actress in the  lead role, but Hayek's drive so impressed the director that she gave her a smaller role in the film for the express purpose of enabling the promising young actress to qualify for membership in the Screen Actors Guild.

Other small roles followed, mostly on television, but it was an appearance on a Spanish-language cable access talk show that led to Hayek's big breakthrough. While in the process of developing a sequel to his wildly successful debut film, El Mariachi, Mexican American director Robert Rodriguez happened to tune in to Hayek's talk show appearance during a fit of late night channel surfing. Fascinated by the lovely and appealing actress, Rodriguez wasted no time finding her, and soon got her interest in taking the female lead in his blockbuster debut, "Desperado" about a gunslinger embroiled in a war with a local drug runner starring Antonio Banderas. 

Rodriguez's financial backers originally resisted his choice of Hayek, but the director won them over by showcasing her in his project for Showtime's Rebel Highway series, "Roadracers". A big financial success, "Desperado" also gained Hayek great media reviews for her sexy performance. Next up were two dull thrillers "Fair Game" and "Fled", Hayek's performances nevertheless gave much needed flair for both projects, and 1997 found her agreeably romantically matched in both "Fools Rush In" and TNT's variation of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", in which she played Esmerelda to Mandy Patinkin's Quasimodo.

Hayek's list of movies continued. She followed her role in the disco "Redux 54" with an appearance next to Will Smith, Bai Ling and Kevin Kline in "Wild Wild West", and co-starred with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Rock, Linda Fiorentino, and Alan Rickman in Kevin Smith's "Dogma", about an abortion clinic worker with a special heritage who is called upon to save the existence of humanity from being negated by two renegade angels trying to exploit a loophole and re-enter Heaven.. 

Through her Ventanarosa production company, she co-produced "The Velocity of Gary", an interesting romantic comedy which combined Salma with Ethan Hawke and Vincent D'Onofrio, and another of her co-productions, the Mexican feature "No One Writes to the Colonel", was recently in competition at Cannes. 

Hayek then filmed the biopic "Frida", again working with Antonio Banderas in which she tackles a desirable portrayal of painter Frida Kahlo.  

Also in 2003, Salma appeared next to Banderas once again in the children's thriller "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over", with a brief appearance by George Clooney, about a girl getting caught in a virtual reality game designed by the Kids' new nemesis, the Toy Maker (Sylvester Stallone), and it's up to her brother to save his sister, and ultimately the world.

Next was "Once Upon A Time In Mexico" with Johnny Depp and Eva Mendes, where hit man "El Mariachi" becomes involved in international espionage involving a psychotic CIA agent and a corrupt Mexican general. Another successful hit in 2003 was "Lonely Hearts" starring John Travolta, James Gandolfini and Jared Leto. Based on the true story, of two homicide detectives tracking Martha Beck and Raymond Martinez Fernandez, a murderous pair known as the "Lonely Hearts Killers" who lured their victims through the personals.

Hayek also made several appearances in the hit television show "Ugly Betty" while working on several films for the 2007-2008 season. These included "Beverly Hills Chihuahua", an animated movie starring the voices of Drew Barrymore, Jamie Lee Curtis and George Lopez about Chloe, a ritzy Beverly Hills Chihuahua, who finds herself lost while on vacation to Mexico, and in need of assistance in order to get back home. Next was "Keep Coming Back" with Steve Buscemi about a good teenager with a bad heart condition and a crush on a stripper (Hayek) twice his age who opts to join her Alcoholics Anonymous group just so he can be in the same room with her.

On a more personal note, Hayek is romantically attached to actor Ed Norton.