Salma Hayek reveals the trauma of filming 'Desperado' love scene

Salma Hayek has spoken of being terrified and crying on set in the moments leading up to her love scene with Antonio Banderas in the 1995 action movie Desperado.

The movie, helmed by her friend Robert Rodriguez, was Hayek's breakthrough role in Hollywood, with her 'best friend' Elizabeth Avellán – Rodriguez's wife at the time – being the movie's producer.

But despite this, when the time came to film the scene, she told Dax Shepard and Monica Padman's Armchair Expert podcast that she broke down.

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“So, when we were going to start shooting, I started to sob,” Hayek said.

“I don't know that I can do it. I'm afraid. One of the things I was afraid of was Antonio — he was an absolute gentleman and so nice, and we're still super close friends — but he was very free. It scared me that for him, it was like nothing. I started crying, and he was like, 'Oh my God. You're making me feel terrible.' And I was so embarrassed that I was crying.

“I was not letting go of the towel,” she went on. “They would try to make me laugh. I would take it off for two seconds and start crying again. But we got through it. We did the best with what we could do at the time.

“When you're not you, then you can do it. But I keep thinking of my father and my brother. And are they going to see it? And are they going to get teased? Guys don't have that. Your father will be, 'Yeah! That's my son!'”

She added that both Banderas and Rodriguez were 'amazing', and 'never put any pressure on me' to complete the scene.

Despite the hiccups during filming, the movie cemented Hayek's career, and she went on to appear in Rodriguez and Tarantino's From Dusk Till Dawn the following year.

By 2002, she had received an Oscar nomination for her role as Frida Kahlo in Julie Taymor's Frida.

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