Salma Hayek has been Robert Rodriguez's muse, and the Tex-Mex director provided her Hollywood big break with "Desperado" and "From Dusk Till Dawn".
The actress has proved she's more than Latino totty - producing "Frida" and directing "The Maldonado Miracle" - but she's happy to turn up in "Once Upon A Time in Mexico" for old time's sake.
Robert Rodriguez has called you his "lucky mascot", so was this just a "lucky mascot" role?
I know he had to cut the role down, because he decided to go at the same time I was doing "Frida". He said, "Push Frida". I'm like, "Come on Robert, don't do this to me!" So what he did is he finished the movie, then stayed two-three weeks so he could do all my stuff.
How was it re-uniting with Rodriguez after the exhausting process of filming "Frida"?
You know I did this film the day after I finished "Frida", and I didn't read the script.
At all?
Not one page. I called him and said, "Robert I haven't read the script, but I promise you I'm going to read it this weekend." He said, "Do me a favour and don't read it." I said, "What do you mean don't read it?" Answer: "No, no, don't read it because you don't have to work on the character because it's the same character you already played. You don't have that many lines, I'll walk you through it, if you don't know it we'll improvise." I'm like, "Oh, how generous," you know.
That's considerate of him...
I showed up on that set, asking "So what do we do?" [Robert's shouting] "Get over there, hurry up, we have to throw you off a building!" It was all stunts! He didn't want me to read the script because I would never have shown up.
So did you do all you stunts?
I had to do all those stunts - I was crazy. Towards the end, I was sitting around on the floor and the head of the stunt guys came round the corner and said, "Robert, I'm really worried, she really shouldn't do this stunt - it's life threatening". And Robert's like, "Oh no, it's OK, she can do it." And I'm like, "I heard that, I heard that! You want to kill me! I'm not doing that one!" And he said, "Listen, I made you, I get to destroy you, get over there!"
