1995’s Desperado may have provided the star with her Hollywood breakthrough, but actress Salma Hayek has revealed that she “had a really hard time” shooting the film’s sex scene with co-star Antonio Banderas, and that it was only added to the movie by the studio after she’d already been cast in the role of Carolina.
“Oh God, I’m gonna be in trouble – but the love scene was not in the script,” said Hayek on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. “It was demanded by the studio when they saw the chemistry test. I had a really, really hard time with that.”
“The wife of Robert Rodriguez at the time became my best friend and she was the producer,” she explained. “Robert, thank God, can do everything on a film set. He can do the sound, operate the camera and he was like my bro so they closed the set. It was Robert, Elizabeth, Antonio and I so that was nice, except that I had never done anything like that so when we were going to start shooting, I started to sob. I kept saying, “I don’t know that I can do it.”
Hayek went on to praise Rodriguez and Banderas for supporting her through the scene, adding that: ” One of the reasons I was afraid was because Antonio was so free – he was an absolute gentleman and we’re still super close friends – but he was very free. It scared me that for him it was like nothing but that scared me because I’ve never been in front of someone like that, in that situation. And I started crying and he’s like, ‘Oh my God, you’re making me feel terrible.’ I was so embarrassed that I was crying. They were great but I was not letting go of the towel. They were trying everything to make me laugh and I would take it off for two seconds before I would start crying again. But we got through it.”
“They were amazing, we did the best with what we could do at the time,” she continued. “They were so magnificent, these three people. The few moments that I was able to get into the character after Robert would walk me through it… but I couldn’t stay in character. That’s why it was all in little clips. Robert decided he was okay with that because he was an editor also so he was going to do it like that so he wouldn’t put pressure on me.”
Even now, some 26 years on, Hayek admits that “I don’t enjoy the scene” and went on to discuss the added pressure that women face compared to their male co-stars: “I would get into Carolina, and then you can do it,” she said. “When you’re not you, you can do it. But I kept thinking of my father and my brother, and are they going to see it, and are they going to get teased? Guys don’t have that.”
Originally published February 22, 2021. Updated August 3, 2024.
