Salma Hayek has revealed that she suffered a near-fatal bout of Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic.
Speaking to Variety, the 54-year-old actor said that she had been put on oxygen and spent about seven weeks in isolation in her home.
“My doctor begged me to go to the hospital because it was so bad,” she said.
“I said, ‘No, thank you. I'd rather die at home.’”
Today, the actor is doing much better, though she says that she still has some long-term effects, including fatigue.
She also described a lack of energy when taking on her first post-Covid role in the forthcoming House Of Gucci with Adam Driver and Lady Gaga,.
“It was not a lot of time,” Hayek said of the shoot. “I had started doing Zooms at one point, but I could only do so many because I would get so tired.”
Hayek also opened up about writing her 2017 New York Times essay about being harassed by disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, who allegedly asked her for sexual favours, “physically dragged” her out of a party, and even threatened her life.
“I will kill you, don’t think I can’t,” Hayek recalled Weinstein saying to her when she refused one of his alleged demands.
Writing the essay was “excruciating”, she told Vanity Fair.
“It was so hard because I chose not to be a victim even though I was a victim. I had to convince myself that I’m a fighter and above all else, a survivor. When all this happened with the Harvey story, I didn’t know that it happened to so many women. I went into such a depression for months. It really took an army of women to make me see I was true survivor, and a true fighter.
“When I wrote it, I didn’t even know if I was really going to show it to anyone,” she continued. “I kept saying, ‘Who wants to hear my story? Why am I giving myself self-importance?’ They had been asking me for it from the beginning, but I put it down on paper just for me.”
