People News

Salma Hayek debunks Latin media reports as 'huge lie'

By M&C News Jul 23, 2006, 23:41 GMT

Stunning actress Salma Hayek has laughed off recent accounts in Mexican and Latin American news outlets that she is rolling in dough. Local media in Mexico and Latin America reported she has a $100 million fortune, and said if she did she would retire and use the money to help the poor."It's a huge lie. It's very, very far from reality. I don't have that amount of money, somebody sent me it and I laughed. It's a bit like a joke. Obviously I have never earned $100 million and I wouldn't even want to," Hayek told Reuters reporter Catherine Bremer, after reading an article in Mexican daily El Universal about a list of "Latino millionaires" in the United States.Veracruz native Hayek is the daughter of a Lebanese businessman and a Mexican opera singer, and even did some time in a New Orleans convent school until her prankster ways got her expelled. Hayek is known to champion many social causes and ills that plague the country of Mexico, including the widespread corruption and blind eye the police and government have towards violence against women.It was her performance as artist Frida Kahlo that garnered an Oscar nomination. Her portrayal of the fated Mexican painter Kahlo, along with co-star Alfred Molina as Kahlo's cheating husband artist/muralist Diego Rivera in director Julie Taymor’s Frida that was widely acclaimed as a stand out performance.Hayek has a lighter side, and is currently producing a series for ABC called Ugly Betty an American version of a Colombian soap opera about a dumpy woman's search for happiness and love.