Salma Hayek
Credit: Venturelli/WireImage

In 2017, Salma Hayek accused now-convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein of death threats, sexual harassment and intimidation while she was on the set of the Oscar-nominated film, Frida. The actress was serving as both the lead actress and producer alongside Weinstein’s Miramax company. Speaking to The Guardian this week, she recalled a single incident where the disgraced producer would “scream” at Hayek due to her appearance.

“I did feel all right [when he bullied me]. OK, I would shake [afterward] and it did depress me, but there was a cartoon aspect about the whole thing,” Hayek told the publication. “When he would call me up [during the making of Frida] and scream, ‘Why do you have a [monobrow] and moustache? I didn’t hire you to look ugly!’ I was like, ‘But didn’t you ever look at a picture of Frida Kahlo?'”

She noted, “If a man was playing Cyrano de Bergerac, he wouldn’t say, ‘What’s with the nose?

Hayek added that she drew from her inner strength to stand up against Weinstein and noted she “didn’t just say no” to the harassment.

“I’m a force to be recognised,” she said. “He never saw me weak. It’s not that I’m not afraid, but you’re not going to see it. I can be almost intimidating in my calm strength, you know?”

In a personal essay for the New York Times – several years before Weinstein was convicted of sexual assault and rape –  Hayek also alleged that the producer would go into a “Machiavellian rage” whenever she refused his sexual advances.

“The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, ‘I will kill you, don’t think I can’t,'” she claimed.

At the time Weinstein denied all claims of abuse.

Hayek appears in the new Marvels film Eternals alongside Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan and Richard Madden.