Despite being married to a billionaire, Salma Hayek hasn’t changed her outlook on the importance of managing personal finances.
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Tuesday, Hayek touched on her relationship with husband François-Henri Pinault, whom she married in 2009.
Pinault is the French-born CEO of Kering, which specializes in luxury goods and is the parent company of Balenciaga, Gucci, Alexander McQueen and other labels. He inherited the company from his father in 2005 and, according to Forbes, has an estimated worth of $20.7 billion.
In her WSJ chat, Hayek acknowledged that she and her husband never signed a prenuptial agreement prior to tying the knot and, as a result, keep their finances completely separate.
“I support a lot of the aspects of my life and myself,” she explained. “I have the pressure to make a certain amount of money, and I like it. And now, I decided, I want to make more.” Pinault, she added, supports her ambitions: “I think he finds it kind of sexy.”
Though Hayek was born into a wealthy family in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, she was expected to contribute financially not long after she moved to Los Angeles in her mid-20s, as her father lost his fortune around that time. Despite those challenges, she looks back at those early years fondly: “That’s when I became the best version of myself.”
Now she says she’s been surprised by one aspect of marrying into a family with extreme wealth.
“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,” she explained. “Strangers coming to me that aren’t even friends, but they think we should be friends because they’re rich, too.”
Hayek, a 2003 Academy Award nominee for her portrayal of Frida Kahlo in “Frida,” didn’t elaborate on how she intends to earn more money.
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Her film career, however, remains in high gear. In 2021, she appeared alongside Angelina Jolie and Richard Madden in “Eternals,” which became her highest-grossing live-action film. Earlier this year, it was announced she’d joined the cast of “Sacrifice,” an adventure comedy also starring Chris Evans and Anya Taylor-Joy.