Looking back, she wished she could've have told her younger self to chill out about love in order to avoid heartbreak. Instead, Hayek found the love of her life.
Salma Hayek wowed audiences with her roles in movies like Grown Ups, The Hitman's Bodyguard, Lonely Hearts and most notably, Frida for which she earned her Imagen Foundation Award for Best Actress. With her beauty and talent, it almost seems as if she wouldn't be too worried about finding love. However, just like a lot of us who look for that right person, she too had her doubts about whether she would actually find true love.
Speaking to Allure while posing for their cover, she said, "I wish I knew [when I was younger] that I was going to fall crazy in love with the perfect man. I was so worried, and I dated some people I shouldn't have dated. You get desperate, and you start seeing wonderful things in, like, the wrong guys. I also found some pretty good guys. But I wish I could say to myself, 'Hey, chill out. You're going to get a great husband that's going to adore you.' I would have saved myself a lot of personal drama." And though it took a lot longer than she might have imagined, in 2009, the then-39-year-old did find the perfect man for her and she wasted no time in marrying him — French billionaire, François-Henri Pinault.
Married for almost 11 years now, the Desperado actress refuses to reveal how the two of them met. When asked by Town and Country Mag, she grinned and said, “I’m not going to tell you. It’s such a romantic, amazing story, but it is mine. I don’t want to vulgarize it by making it into a story to make myself interesting.” Yet, that doesn't stop her from gushing over him a decade after their wedding and having a child together. As she told the outlet, Pinault is “the best husband in the world. I get to be who I am with him, and I don’t feel that somebody tries to limit me.”
But that isn't the only thing that makes their marriage work. Shortly after their daughter, Valentina was born, the actress slowly started to let her professional career slide. However, her husband wouldn't let that happen. In the interview with Allure, the mother stated, "I said, 'I don't think I want to work anymore.' And it was François who said, 'Oh, no, you're going back to work.' And I said, 'I don't want to.' 'Well, you have to. We're not putting up with some lazy girl in the house. That's not who I married.' And then he said something so beautiful. 'I don't want to be deprived of your work. I want to watch it, too. And the world has not seen the best of you yet. So you cannot stop until some of that is put out.' So he sort of really pushed me, like, 'Get up on your feet and get out there.' And he was right."
And she loved the fact that he respected her independence, especially when it comes to finances. "I have a system in my life that I've chosen, where my expenses from before the marriage are my expenses," she said. She revealed to the magazine that when he proposed to her, she wanted to stay at least partially financially independent, especially considering he is a billionaire. "And he goes, 'I know. That's why I want to marry you,'" the 53-year-old explained. "Maybe that's also part of what works great in my marriage," she added. "I still have my independence. But he likes it.... And I get a lot of respect from him."
As for what else makes their family solid, it's roughly these two things. One is the fact that they married later in life and she had her little girl at 41. She revealed she was glad she was a "late bloomer." “I think I’m a better mother because I had her later,” Hayek revealed. “But I do get tired. I’m not going to lie.”
Two, she can't stay away from her tiny family for too long. "I've never been apart from my daughter for more than two weeks. And same with François. We don't separate for long periods of time. Never," she said to Allure. Well, it seems like her worries were for naught as she found a true partner in her husband, one with whom she created a genuine home sweet home.
References:
https://www.allure.com/gallery/salma-hayek-interview#slide=1
