Oscar-nominated actress Salma Hayek (Frida) has had her fair share of pets throughout her life, but the one she is spending the most time with these days is her owl.
During a recent interview with People magazine, Hayek talked about how she came to own such an exotic bird. It was actually a Valentine’s Day gift for her husband François-Henri Pinault two years ago. Her husband, however, had a feeling Hayek had really adopted the owl for herself.
“He’s like, ‘Well, thank you, but…this is your own present for yourself and I know that, but that’s OK,’” Hayek says.
Hayek named the owl Kering after her husband’s company, which sports an owl logo and owns the luxury brands Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Gucci. Speaking of Gucci, Hayek was just cast in director Ridley Scott’s upcoming film House of Gucci. The film is about Patrizia Reggiani, aka “Black Widow,” an Italian socialite who served 18 years for hiring a hitman to kill her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci, the grandson of Gucci founder Guccio Gucci. In the film, Hayek will play Pina Auriemma, a clairvoyant friend of Reggiani, who will be portrayed by Oscar-nominated actress Lady Gaga (A Star is Born).
Is it just us, or is it a bit eerie that Hayek has a pet owl in the first place? She is half Mexican, so she’s had to have heard the scary stories about the lechuza (owl), right? The folklore says the lechuza is a shape-shifting witch that is also a sign of unfortunate things to come.
Whether she knows about it or not, it doesn’t seem to faze Hayek since she sometimes lets the owl into her bedroom at night.
“She doesn’t sleep,” Hayek said. “I watch TV with my iPad and she likes to stand on the iPad. Sometimes I stay up really late. Eventually, when I go to sleep, she’s flying around and sometimes it can be scary because she can land on my head or…she’ll come and grab my feet.”
While an owl’s talons grabbing your feet in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping sounds like the stuff of nightmares, it seems like Hayek and Kering have a special connection. Still, Hayek hasn’t always had good fortune with animals.
Last year, she told People that during the production of Frida in the early 2000s, she was “severely injured” on the set by one of the spider monkeys she was working with. Frida Kahlo owned two spider monkeys during her lifetime. One was a gift from her husband, muralist Diego Rivera.
