When Oscar-nominated actress Salma Hayek (Frida) first broke into the Hollywood scene in filmmaker Robert Rodriguez’s 1995 action movie Desperado, she had already starred in a pair of Mexican telenovelas, which introduced her to the world of acting in the mid-1980s.
In a video from around that time frame – and reportedly shown for the first time recently on Univision’s Despierta América – the Mexican-Lebanese actress can be seen auditioning for a role in Spanish when she was 20 years old. During the audition, Hayek is wearing a green blouse and necklace and sporting a very 80s hairstyle. She first introduces herself to the camera.
“I am Salma Hayek,” she says in Spanish. “I am 20 years old. I am in the first group of the second year of the Training Center, and I have no experience.”
Then, the video, which over two million people on YouTube have seen to date, cuts to Hayek reciting a monologue where she is speaking to a rotary telephone sitting on a desk.
In Spanish, her monologue is recited as the following: “Aquí estoy y aquí estás. ¿No has llamado, querido? Si me lo dijeras, si pudieras hablarme con tu voz propia en vez de solo transmitir la mía y la de él. ¿Cómo será tu voz? Porque no eres, no puedes ser un simple instrumento mecánico cuando eres capaz de comunicar las emociones del hombre y tienes todas las voces: la áspera y agresiva, la dulce, la amistosa, la de la mujer y la del hombre”.
Hayek’s next live-action movie is the sequel to Magic Mike’s Last Dance, which is currently in production. She was reportedly brought into the project to replace Thandiwe Newton after she and Channing Tatum allegedly argued on set.