Spare a thought for Salma Hayek, who complains she was ‘too sexy’ to get comedy roles

Salma Hayek has opened up on a dark chapter in her career, detailing how for years she wasn’t able to do conventional comedy films off the back of how “sexy” she was.

Hayek has starred here, there, and everywhere in Hollywood. With roles in action horror flicks like From Dusk till Dawn to her recent Marvel debut with Eternals, you’d be hard-pressed to find a genre she hasn’t had an outing in. But for years, Hayek was unable to land a role in a comedy due to apparently being too sexy. Woe is Salma.

Currently promoting Magic Mike’s Last Dance, the threequel event of the year, she opened up to GQ on how her attractiveness hindered her chances of getting her dream gig in comedy. She credits Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups for her first outright comedy role, though calling Grown Ups a comedy might be deemed offensive to funny movies.

“My entire life I wanted to do comedy and people wouldn’t give me comedies. I couldn’t land a role until I met Adam Sandler, who put me in a comedy [Grown Ups], but I was in my forties! They said, ‘You’re sexy, so you’re not allowed to have a sense of humor.’ Not only are you not allowed to be smart, but you were not allowed to be funny in the 90s”

While being typecast is fairly awful for actors, there’s a level of Hollywood brain about letting everyone know how you were deemed too sexy to do comedic roles. Hayek is undoubtedly telling the truth though; Megan Fox never really got much of a chance outside of playing fairly one-dimensional eye candy in the Transformers films.

The layers of sexism in Hollywood making it hard for actresses to change genres are slowly decaying, especially as female-directed movies have become more prevalent in major studios. Magic Mike’s Last Dance will be in cinemas on Feb. 10.