Salma Hayek has opened up about her finances as she reveals she still feels pressured to earn a ‘certain amount of money’.
The actress, 58, best known for her work on Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn and Dogma, has had a long and successful career after decades in the film industry.
Although she has a net worth of an estimated $200 million (£154 million) and is married to French billionaire, François-Henri Pinault, 62, she has admitted that she feels ‘pressure’ to make money.
‘I support a lot of the aspects of my life and myself,’ the actress, told The Wall Street Journal Magazine in an interview published on Tuesday.
‘I have the pressure to make a certain amount of money, and I like it. And now, I decided, I want to make more.’
She also said that she and her husband, who has an estimated worth of $34.8 billion (£26.8 billion), prefer to keep their finances separate and there’s no prenuptial agreement dividing assets.
The actress married her engagement and pregnancy with the billionaire in 2007. Their daughter was born in 2007 and their wedding took place on Valentine’s Day in 2009.
She confessed earlier this year: ‘I didn’t even know I was getting married that day. It was like an intervention. I don’t think I ever told this story.
Salma said she was just ‘taken to the court’, adding: ‘My parents, my brother, they were all ganging up on me. I had a phobia of the marriage thing. The reason why it was a courthouse wedding was because they dragged me there.’
She told Glamour for their February 2023 issue: ‘I was nervous. And then after, there was a lunch at his parents’ house. My mother-in-law, who’s the most tasteful person when it comes to entertaining, had already been doing the lunch. I had no choice.’
It’s thought that the couple met at a gala in Venice or were set up by friends in 2006, but Salma has been cagey about the details of their introduction.
‘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,’ she once told Town & Country.
Salma’s husband’s wealth is generational, stemming from inheriting his role as the President and CEO of Kering from his father in 2005.
Kering Group controls the luxury labels Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, and many others.
Salma was born in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico to a wealthy family and was enrolled in a Catholic boarding school in New Orleans when she was 12.
In the interview with WSJ, the star added that when she married into the extremely wealthy Pinault family, she was surprised that other wealthy people wanted to build a friendship with her.
‘To me, the excitement about having a lot of money was that I didn’t have to think about money, and it turned out all people wanted to talk to me about was money,’ Salma explained.
‘Strangers coming to me that aren’t even friends, but they think we should be friends because they’re rich, too.’