Salma Hayek felt just like the mother on the set of Eternals

Salma Hayek laughs when requested if she ever felt just like the mother of the group on the set of Eternals.
“Yes, because everyone also came to tell me about their problems … and I liked it a lot,” says the Mexican actor, who at 55 performs the matriarch of the superheroes within the new Marvel film.

And as a pattern, she stated she had “thousands” of anecdotes.
“For example, Barry (Keoghan), who plays the role of Druig, has dyslexia like me and came to my trailer every day: ‘Help me, help me with the lines, I’m ashamed that others hear how I read.’ And there I would sit with him and we would laugh a lot. It was like doing homework with my kid,” Hayek stated in Spanish throughout a latest video interview from London. “He is much younger than me, and he is another actor with dyslexia.”

Eternals, directed by Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao, opens Friday in theaters.
The movie follows a gaggle of immortal beings with superhuman powers who’ve secretly lived on Earth for hundreds of years, and who now collect to struggle the evil Deviants, a fictional race of humanoids. The solid consists of Angelina Jolie, Kumail Nanjiani, Richard Madden, Gemma Chan and Lauren Ridloff, the primary deaf actor to play a superhero within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
As Ajak, whose superpower is therapeutic, Hayek’s is the one character who has a direct connection to the Celestials, an historic race of beings that possess huge talents to govern matter and vitality, and who despatched the Eternals on a mission to Earth.

The actor, who had expertise with CGI from Robert Rodriguez’s “Spy Kids” films, stated she was stunned by how little the expertise was utilized in Zhao’s movie. The “Nomadland” director is thought for her relatively naturalistic type.
“Normally they don’t use locations (for superhero movies), all the scenery is done later with computers. We filmed in the Canary Islands and here in the UK and I loved it, it all felt very organic,” she stated, noting that her solely CGI scenes are these by which she speaks to a Celestial.

“You are seeing a cross on a green wall while you have thousands of extensions that weigh a lot and this thing that I have on my head that also weighs, so I ended with some neck pain … but I just did that a couple of times.”
One of her largest challenges, actually, was associated to the costumes. In addition to the headdress and extensions, a number of the fits had been so tight that gaining just some kilos may very well be an issue.
“I was terrified because the filming took like five months. I didn’t go every day, but it was a period of five months where, if you gain weight — and I tend to be like this,” she says, making waves along with her hand. “I said, ’Oh, I am not going to be able to gain or lose any weight because of those suits.”
Salma Hayek poses for photographers upon arrival on the premiere of the movie ‘Eternals’ on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021 in London. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)
“I was absolutely right!” she added with amusing. “After the pandemic, I had to do a couple more shots and the suit didn’t fit anymore! Good thing that it was something very small, because it was really traumatizing. But hey, it happened to many of us.”
Eternals is one among 4 Hayek movies releasing in 2021. The Oscar-nominated actress (for 2002′s Frida) starred this 12 months in Bliss and Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, and can subsequent seem in House of Gucci with Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons and Al Pacino.
Of the 4, Eternals is the one one directed by a girl.

“I have such an admiration for her,” she stated excitedly about Zhao. “She is super strong, she knows very well what she wants. Some people said, ‘Oh, but she’s made very small movies, she’s not going to know how to handle such a big production.’ Uff, she is super technical, well-educated in cinema, she understands both the immense and the personal … and she handles the actors super well.”

Zhao made certain to place collectively a solid that couldn’t be extra inclusive. In addition to Hayek as a Latina and Ridloff as the primary deaf superhero, Eternals additionally options Black (Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos) and Asian actors (Chan, Nanjiani and Ma Dong-seok, as Makkari, Kingo and Gilgamesh, respectively) and reveals the primary homosexual kiss in a Marvel film.
Hayek stated opined that whereas the inclusion of a various solid “sometimes feels a little forced,” that was not the case for Eternals.
“Like everything Chloe does, she really does it from her gut, because she believes in it naturally,” she stated.