Her life sounds impossibly glamorous, with a house in Paris, a château outside the city and a home in Los Angeles. But she doesn’t come across as jaded.
Her life, she says, is governed by hard work and down-to-earth values learned growing up in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, with her mother Diana, an opera singer, her father Sami, an oil company executive, and younger brother, also Sami, in a close-knit community. As a child Salma was a talented gymnast.
‘At one point I had to leave my little town to go and train in Mexico City, and then when it was time to get drafted [compete seriously] and stay there, my father didn’t allow it. I had to go home.’ She studied international relations at college, left to pursue acting and starred in a popular Mexican soap opera before moving to LA, aged 22.
She admits it was an uphill battle to get decent parts. ‘People advised me to go back to Mexico, settle down and have kids.’ Ignoring them, Salma taught herself English and landed her first major film role in the 1995 blockbuster Desperado, opposite Antonio Banderas.
