Salma Valgarma Hayek Pinault is a Mexican, American and French actress and film producer. She began her career in Mexico with starring roles in the telenovela Teresa (1989–1991) as well as the romantic drama Midaq Alley (1995). She soon established herself in Hollywood with appearances in films such as Desperado (1995), From Dusk till Dawn (1996), Wild Wild West (1999), and Dogma (1999).

Salma Hayek was born in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico. Her father, Sami Hayek Domínguez, is of Lebanese descent. His ancestors hail from the city of Baabdat, Lebanon, a city Salma and her father visited in 2015 to promote her movie Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. He owns an industrial-equipment firm and is an oil company executive in Mexico; he once ran for mayor of Coatzacoalcos. Her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina, is an opera singer and talent scout; she is of Spanish descent. While visiting Madrid in an interview in 2015 with Un Nuevo Día, Hayek described herself as fifty-percent Lebanese and fifty-percent Spanish saying that her grandmother/maternal great-grandparents were from Spain. Her younger brother, Sami, is a furniture designer.