Salma Hayek Faced Her Worst Fear in Tarantino’s Vampire Movie & Stole the Show
The actress was never seen in Quentin Tarantino-directed movies, but she still starred alongside the director — and he was the reason why Salma Hayek almost lost the role.
Quentin Tarantino is one of the greatest minds in modern cinema, so no wonder he knows for sure how exactly every scene must be carried out — even when his movies’ actors don’t really agree.
Having educated himself with movie tapes and a job at a video tape store, Tarantino had no time for jokes even while working on movies he wasn’t directing — despite not helming a flick, he would still come on board as a writer or even an actor.
In one of such movies Tarantino also starred alongside Salma Hayek who might not have had the best filming experience at the time.
However, her scene-stealing performance remains unbeatable even today.
Salma Hayek Starred Alongside Quentin Tarantino in ‘From Dusk till Dawn’
- On Rotten Tomatoes, From Dusk till Dawn has scores of 65% and 76% from critics and viewers
- On IMDb, the movie is rated 7.2/10
Directed by Robert Rodriguez, the horror action movie had Quentin Tarantino on board as both a writer and one of the leading actors on par with George Clooney.
Salma Hayek had a smaller, yet still significant role of Santánico Pandemonium, a vampire stripper who Clooney and Tarantino’s criminals end up with in an isolated bar as they seek ways to escape from a horde of vampires and go to the Mexican border.
From Dusk till Dawn was released in theatres back in 1996 and first garnered mixed reviews, despite going big in the box office and grossing around $60 million against a $19 million budget.
With time, however, the movie turned into a cult classic, partially due to Hayek’s memorable performance and her iconic dance with a snake that at some point made the actress reconsider her decision to take on the role.
Quentin Tarantino Wanted to Replace Salma Hayek With Madonna
It might be that Tarantino believed in Hayek’s fearless Mexican nature, but the movie did turn out to be the actress’ biggest career challenge since she’s always been frightened by snakes.
As she recalled during an interview with E! News, Tarantino was ready to replace Hayek with Madonna if the former hadn’t agreed to dance with a snake for the movie.
“Quentin told me, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re dancing with a snake.’ I said, ‘I can’t do that, I can’t do that. It’s my greatest fear.’ He said, well, Madonna will do it, I already talked to her, and she’s willing to dance with the snake’”, Hayek said, adding that she eventually felt extremely insecure and just wanted to get through the scene as soon as possible.
However, this was the reason why Hayek was so surprised by the audiences’ praise for her performance which, to many, remains the entire movie’s most memorable moment.
