Salma Hayek was diagnosed with COVID-19 toward the start of the pandemic and only now is she regaining her strength. It was a near-fatal battle she fought with the virus, but the actress chose to keep quiet about it until now. Hayek opened up about her diagnosis in a new interview with Variety.
"My doctor begged me to go to the hospital because it was so bad," the 54-year-old "Frida" star recalled. "I said, 'No, thank you. I’d rather die at home.'"
For nearly two months Hayek was isolated in a room at the London home she shares with her husband, François-Henri Pinault, and their 13-year-old daughter, Valentina. At one point she was put on oxygen. A year later and Hayek returned to work to shoot Ridley Scott’s "House of Gucci," which features Lady Gaga and Adam Driver.
"It was not a lot of time," Hayek said. "It was easy. It was the perfect job to just get back into it. I had started doing Zooms at one point, but I could only do so many because I would get so tired."
Next month, she returns to the big screen opposite Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson in the action-comedy "Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard," a sequel to "The Hitman’s Bodyguard," which was released in 2017. The film wrapped up in 2019, but the pandemic forced the August 2020 release date to be pushed back.
Hayek's revelation comes days after Pink revealed that her own COVID-19 battle forced her to rewrite her will. The pop star and her 4-year-old son, Jameson Moon, both tested positive for coronavirus in April 2020. In an interview with Mark Wright of Heart Radio, she admitted thinking she and her son may die.
"It was really, really bad, and I rewrote my will," she said. "At the point where I thought it was over for us, I called my best friend and I said, 'I just need you to tell [daughter] Willow how much I love her. It was really, really scary and really bad."
Pink added that the experience left her wondering what last impressions she would leave on her children.
"As a parent, you think, 'What am I leaving for my kid? What am I teaching them? Are they going to make it in this world?' " she told Wright. " 'And what do I need to tell them if this is the last time I get to tell them anything?' "
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Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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