‘I Started To Sob’: Salma Hayek On Filming ‘Desperado’ Sex Scene

Actress Salma Hayek recently revealed the stress she felt while filming her first sex scene in the 1995 film “Desperado.” Hayek said she was not initially aware there was going to a sex scene in the film, and literally started to sob while trying to film the uncomfortable shots, at times thinking of her brother and father.

Hayek, 54, reportedly told actor Dax Shepard on his podcast “Armchair Expert” that she “remembered being grateful for landing the part of Carolina, but admits she wasn’t aware she’d have to film a sex scene until after production started,” according to Fox News.

Hayek, starring opposite Antonio Banderas, filmed the uncomfortable scene on a closed set with director Robert Rodriguez and his then-wife producer Elizabeth Avellán, Fox noted.

“So, when we were going to start shooting, I started to sob, ‘I don’t know that I can do it. I’m afraid,’” the actress recalled.

“One of the things I was afraid of was Antonio — he was an absolute gentleman and so nice, and we’re still super close friends — but he was very free. It scared me that for him, it was like nothing. I started crying, and he was like, ‘Oh my God. You’re making me feel terrible.’ And I was so embarrassed that I was crying,” she said.

“I was not letting go of the towel. They would try to make me laugh. I would take it off for two seconds and start crying again. But we got through it. We did the best with what we could do at the time.”

Hayek said she found herself thinking of her brother and her father as cameras rolled for the scene. “When you’re not you, then you can do it. But I keep thinking of my father and my brother,” she said. “And are they going to see it? And are they going to get teased? Guys don’t have that. Your father will be, ‘Yeah! That’s my son!’”

In a podcast taped in January, actress Keira Knightley announced that all of her future sex scenes will be in films with female directors only, thus dodging the so-called “male gaze,” The Daily Wire reported:

Knightley, who said in March 2020 that she had implemented a no-nudity clause in her contract with veto power over any sex scene she appeared in, told the Chanel Connects podcast of her new ban on male directors: “I don’t have an absolute ban but I kind of do with men. It’s partly vanity and also it’s the male gaze.”

“If I was making a story that was about that journey of motherhood and body [acceptance], I feel like, I’m sorry, but that would have to be with a female film-maker,” Knightley stated. “If it was about motherhood, about how extraordinary that body is, about how suddenly you’re looking at this body that you’ve got to know and is your own and it’s seen in a completely different way and it’s changed in ways which are unfathomable to you before you become a mother, then yeah, I would totally be up for exploring that with a woman who would understand that. But I feel very uncomfortable now trying to portray the male gaze.”

Related: ‘The Male Gaze’: Keira Knightley Says No More Nude Scenes With Male Directors

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