Salma Hayek was born on September 2, 1966, in the Coatzacoalcos, Mexico to a well-to-do Catholic family. She and her younger brother, Sami, never had to worry about money, as her father was a businessman and her mother was a popular opera-singer. When Salma was five years old, she went and saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and decided that she wanted to be an actress. This fleeting thought, though was buried for several years, was to reappear later in her life (Biography).

 

        At age 12, Salma was sent to the Academy of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic boarding school in Louisiana (Biography). Over the two years that she spent there, Salma played countless tricks on the nuns, like setting their clocks back three hours. Finally, the nuns had enough, and she was expelled (AceShowBiz.com). Salma then spent the next couple of years living with an aunt in Houston, before heading back home to Mexico. When she returned home, she attended the Universidad Iberoamericana where she studied International Relations and Drama. This was where Salma discovered that she wanted to pursue acting as a career (Biography).