You have to learn how to dress. It’s a science

Does she need a moment to eat? ‘Oh no,’ she says, waving a fork like a conductor’s baton. ‘Please, please, I can talk and eat.’ And with that, Hayek, who turned 49 earlier this month, starts to laugh. ‘You see? You see how excited I get?’

The Oscar-nominated actress and committed advocate of women’s rights (she co-founded global women’s charity Chime for Change in 2013) has also become the first lady of fashion thanks to her 2009 Valentine’s Day marriage to François-Henri Pinault, the 53-year-old multibillionaire French fashion mogul. As CEO of the huge fashion conglomerate Kering, Pinault’s businesses include Gucci, Saint Laurent, Boucheron, Bottega Veneta and Brioni, as well as British fashion houses Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. Other business interests include Puma, Christie’s, Château Latour and even extend to the Ligue 1 football team Stade Rennais.

It’s a title that sits alongside her role as a serious Hollywood heavyweight, known not just for her acting (her role as Frida Kahlo in 2002’s Frida saw her nominated in the Best Actress category at the Academy Awards, BAFTAs and Golden Globes) but also as a star Hollywood producer, and an entrepreneur in her own right. Her production company Ventanarosa made the award-winning TV series Ugly Betty and, more recently, the feature film The Prophet. Her beauty brand Nuance is available in CVS pharmacies in the US, while her juice delivery company Cooler Cleanse is credited as one of the first to start the ‘green juice’ phenomenon.

• I was thinking last night that maybe next year, when I finish the two or three films I’m working on, I’m going to take it easy and just go to the spa every day… but it would be so boring. No?’ She gives a knowing smile. ‘I guess it’s not altogether me.’

As for her charity work, she says: ‘I work behind the scenes and there’s a lot of work you don’t see. I love it, but sometimes you want to help and make a difference but there are so many things that have to align to make even one small change…’

Hayek perceives herself as a ‘late bloomer’ in both business and motherhood. Her daughter Valentina, seven, was born when she was 41, which she views as ‘a fantastic privilege’: ‘Sometimes you find the love of your life at 16 and sometimes… you don’t. Both have pros and cons. For me, I’m a better mother because I had my child later, but I think your child comes at the right time — when it’s supposed to come for you. I don’t believe it’s when you want a child but when it’s time for that soul to come.’

The Pinault-Hayek family divide their time between Paris and West London, where the couple bought a home in 2014, with Valentina now happily ensconced at a local primary school. ‘I found such a sweet school and I love it,’ says Hayek. ‘I don’t know if we’re going to stay or not, but it’s been a great adventure. I’m so happy. I have so many great friends here and I speak English much better than I speak French.’

It’s a long way from Coatzacoalcos, the vibrant port city in Mexico where Salma and her younger brother Sami were born to Sami, a Lebanese-born business executive, and Diana, a Spanish-born former opera singer. She is proud of her European, Arabic and Mexican roots, and her childhood was filled with trips to Europe, ski holidays in the US, and a two-year stint at a school in Louisiana.

Her first foray into acting was playing Jasmine in Aladdin at the Teatro de los Insurgentes, one of Mexico City’s most distinguished theatres. Her parents had been keen for her to go into business and she had begun studying international relations at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, but acting proved irresistible and she decided to leave to pursue her dream. In 1989, she was cast as the eponymous lead in the telenovela Teresa, which made her a national icon. Following further success in the award-winning film El Callejón de los Milagros, at 25 she moved to Hollywood.

There were few, if any, Mexican stars in Hollywood and she says with a huge smile: ‘I came from Mexico, baby. If you’re Mexican and Arabic in the United States, it’s a long way to climb those mountains!’

It was Hayek’s sheer drive and self-belief that kept her going after she walked out on the fame that was on offer back in her native country. ‘Sometimes you need a lot of things to keep you going,’ she says, and with that she takes pretty much her first long breath of the afternoon. ‘I hope this doesn’t sound wrong, but it’s my honest answer. I had a sense of purpose. Like I was supposed to do something. I couldn’t sit back and just complain. I had to be honest to my dream. I felt that they [casting directors in Hollywood] were wrong. They were misinformed. It wasn’t anger but that they were confused, as I could see the reality of the percentage of the Latino popularity versus the percentage of the representation of the Latino population. I knew my self-worth.’ Robert Rodriguez, a Texan of Mexican descent, cast her in Desperado, starring Antonio Banderas, and from then on she never looked back.

But it was her role in Frida, which she also produced, that won her acclaim. Later this month she’s back in a romcom, Lessons in Love. She believes that she had to work much harder than anyone else to earn respect from producers, directors and studios. ‘That’s for sure,’ she says. ‘There was nobody when I got here and now there are so many more of us.’

Now she commands respect from the film industry (Harvey Weinstein described her as ‘the biggest ball-breaker I ever met’) and due to her position in fashion, she’s also a phone call away from some of the world’s leading couture houses. By her own admission, she is not a great shopper. She doesn’t need to be. However, she has a confession: ‘I still struggle like everyone else with "what am I going to wear?" ’

For a woman with such phenomenal access, this seems insane. She continues: ‘Isn’t that crazy? It’s because they photograph it and you can’t keep wearing it and wearing it. I don’t have a stylist and I do feel that I’m scrutinised.’ Instead, she has someone at each brand, whom she can call: ‘Maybe that’s why I have real human relationships with the different people who work for the different brands.’

Hayek is friends with many of the designers — her friendship with Stella McCartney goes back to a chance meeting in LA when McCartney was still at Chloé: ‘Stella is fun, so much fun. I’m almost embarrassed to say how long I’ve known her for. I love her sister Mary, too. I’ve made some good friends.’ Her bond with London fashion is a strong one, also going back years. Hayek was a huge fan (and friend) of Alexander McQueen and when asked if she had to pick one favourite dress, she immediately chooses a McQueen garment: ‘I really cherish all the time we spent together and there was a dress he was working on when he died that he didn’t finish. I wore that dress for the Met, when it was the first exhibition for him, and maybe it was not the most flashy dress but it was the last one he touched.’ At this point, Hayek’s voice gets a little slower: ‘Sarah [Burton], whom I adore — such an extraordinary woman — finished it and though it wasn’t designed for me, I felt so privileged. That was the most special dress.’

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Today, McQueen is one of the many Kering brands under the ultimate stewardship of her husband, but she is clear that it’s not a requirement that she represents them. ‘He puts no pressure on me.’ But does she put pressure on herself? ‘Not so much. I should put more pressure on myself. Sometimes I think I should do more. I like fashion. I appreciate it but I’m not its slave. I also like to feel comfortable and don’t want to be obsessed. I think it’s also healthy for the kids to see you not perfect all the time, it doesn’t feel like a mommy, with "the show" and the heels. But I do like to dress up for my husband. I really do. And he likes it, too.’

Before marrying Pinault, fashion wasn’t an area of interest in Hayek’s portfolio, but now she admits to having a ‘better appreciation of it’. She attends shows regularly: ‘I have so much more respect for the people involved in fashion. When you really get to know what they have put themselves through to get those collections out... The level of creativity. The designers are superheroes. They have to be artists and be creative under such stress, expectation and competition.’

That she doesn’t feel obliged to list Kering designers among her favourites is a mark of her independence on that front: ‘One is Narciso Rodriguez, who has been my friend since the beginning, and then Giambattista Valli. I wear a lot of his clothes and he’s a good friend. And Azzedine Alaïa, whom I adore. He’s so wise, funny and I just love him. They taught me a lot about proportion. Because, as you can see, I’m not a typical model. When you don’t look like a model, you have to learn how to dress: what works and what doesn’t. At different points, they all taught me tricks: what to accentuate, what to stay away from, and what an inch up or an inch down does. It’s such a science. They’re kind of engineers, especially when they have a challenging body like mine. For fashion, my body’s challenging.’

She confesses that she likes to wear ‘super casual’ clothes on her days off and today she’s Kering-free. She’s wearing a silky midnight blue belted jumpsuit. It flatters her petite frame, while the colour takes on a satin-like sheen in the LA sunshine.

• You see this?’ she says. ‘It’s from a store in Notting Hill, Soler. It’s a girl [Alexandra Al-Bader] who designs her own clothes and she only has one store in the world. It’s really hands-on. You go there and it’s like in the old days. She has a seamstress there. She designs the fabrics and you can say, "I want this one but I would like it to be like this or that" and she fixes it for you. It’s amazing. It’s a boutique, like in the old days in Spain, and she’s Spanish. I love that store. It’s one of my finds in London. It’s my secret spot.’

Secret spots are few and far between for Hayek these days as her life is now very much in the spotlight. How does she continue to keep her drive and vision for all aspects of her work? ‘I think some of it comes from anger, some from love, some from curiosity,’ she says, impassioned again. ‘Some comes from romanticism that the world can be a better place. It makes me angry that women are not treated right. It makes me angry that we’re at such a disadvantage compared to men. It makes me angry that the world is not better, but I don’t think I’m an angry woman. You have to stay a little naïve. I think that it’s nice to be a little romantic and a bit cynical. Why not be both? You can be both.’

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