The Real Housewife of Paris
By GABY WOOD
Published: February 27, 2011
Salma Hayek is getting down to business. She has just arrived at our photo shoot in Paris, makeup-free, hair bundled up into a Rasta-like knitted cap, and now she's sitting next to the photographer on the couch, going through pictures they're using as reference points. The Xeroxed photos are provocatively sexy -- Romy Schneider looking pained and delirious, Catherine Deneuve pulling her camisole down for Helmut Newton, a bare-bottomed model leaning over a fur coat on a balcony -- but this seems to bother Hayek not at all. She examines them almost as if she were the producer of the shoot rather than the subject.
There is (as is customary) a slight nervousness in the room about what she will turn out to be like to work with, what she will or won't agree to. First of all, she apologizes: most of these images are of women with cigarettes dangling from their lips, but she has a rule about not smoking in pictures. Fine; a lit match is decided upon instead. With all eyes on her, she continues to leaf through until she gets to the naked backside. She stops, and briskly slaps the pile of pictures down on her lap.
''O.K.,'' she says, keeping an entirely straight face, ''what I can do is put a cigarette in my ass. I don't think that sets a bad example, do you?''
Inevitably, everyone is in stitches, and it's apparent straightaway that this is Hayek's gift: she's funny and rude and can win over all manner of people in record time. Sometimes her laughter, which comes easily, is low and breathy, like a throwback to girlhood, and yet her speech has a grown-up, rugged quality to it, a combination of warmth and skepticism that draws you in quickly -- as if to say, before anything is even in question: You and me, we're not going to fall for any bull, are we?
A few arrondissements away is a place she now calls home. Hayek has devoted herself with extreme focus to what amounts to several careers: Mexican soap star, Hollywood movie star, producer, Oscar nominee, red-carpet glamazon, outspoken activist. Yet by far the most significant roles in her life are not even on that list: the role of wife to Fran?s-Henri Pinault, C.E.O. of the luxury conglomerate PPR, and mother to their 3-year-old daughter, Valentina.
Two years ago, Hayek and Pinault got married -- twice. Once privately, on Valentine's Day, and then later in Venice, in a lavish, star-studded ceremony for which she wore a Grace Kelly-esque dress designed by Nicolas Ghesqui?. But things had been quite publicly un-straightforward between them before that. The couple lived on two different continents, they had a child, they were engaged and then the engagement was called off.
''I can't tell you about that in detail,'' she says when I ask her. She is in the bathroom at the shoot, having her hair done. ''All I can tell you is that it worked for the best, because . . . we never fight. The only time we had a problem was during this period of time. We separated, and then -- this happens a lot -- when you get back together, you do it completely sure that this is what you want, and completely in appreciation of what you have. So in our case, it was the best thing that could have happened to us, as much as it was painful.''
The pair met five years ago, in circumstances she prefers to keep to herself, and, she says, he proposed early. ''We kept it a secret. Because it was like: how are we gonna do it? The first thing I panicked about was moving. I got scared. I said: 'I'm not moving to Paris to be a housewife.' And he said: 'fine, we'll be different.' It's sort of exciting to have a different kind of marriage.'' Hayek shifts into a gravelly voice. ''He knew I was going to end up here, but he said the right thing! Before I knew it I was spending most of my time here, and I love it.''
Nevertheless, I suggest, she has hardly just moved to Paris and become a housewife. There's a pause. Hayek turns to me with quiet indignation.
''No, you're wrong,'' she says. ''I am a housewife. Do you cook every night for your husband? I do. I am most definitely a housewife. And a good one, I must say!''
Pinault, she explains, doesn't like to have a lot of people in the house. ''He's very low key. Our life is great and glamorous in many ways, and in many ways -- in the good ways -- it's very homey.''
I ask, rather na?ly, if she feels she's left her wild days behind, and I get one of her signature raised eyebrows by way of reply.
''Define 'wild,' '' she says.
A bit of background: their New Year was spent in St. Barths, finally accepting an oft-repeated invitation from their good friend the venture capitalist Vivi Nevo to come and stay. The three of them went, spent the evening with Valentina (Hayek showed me pictures Valentina took on Hayek's iPhone of Pinault with Hayek in her pajamas), then hit the parties: Roman Abramovich's, Paul Allen's. They hung out with her good friends Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. ''It was crazy,'' she says, ''so many people, so many parties. I'm so glad we did it, but I like to relax. Next holiday it's back to the private beach.''