Salma Hayek Quotes

There were a lot of kids from Puerto Rico at my high school in Florida; people always assumed I was Puerto Rican. Even now in California, I get talked to on the street in Spanish constantly!

If people are going to complain about stereotyping, it's as likely to be Italian-Americans as gay people.

I was always curious about the anxiety a person would feel when you open your mouth and you have an accent. You could have a Ph.D. or be a lawyer, but as soon as you say something, you may be diminished in the eyes of someone else.

I would be criticized, like, 'You don't talk Korean enough. You sound very American. You sound very white in your music.' And I'm like, 'Whoa.'

I know Asian actors out there won't even audition for a role that have an accent. But for me, I was the kid with an accent. I still have an accent to some degree.

I get irritated by the term 'African writer', because it doesn't mean anything to me.

Early on, people told me I was making Chinese people look bad. I've been living with this accent. I had already been doing standup for a while. I knew my voice already. I myself never wanted to make my accent the butt of the joke. I never want it to be, 'I'm laughing at your accent.'

I'm a natural blonde. But when I started acting, I would go to auditions and they didn't know where to put me because I was voluptuous and had the accent, but I had blonde hair. It was ignorance: they thought every Latin person looks like Salma Hayek.

Everyone thinks that just because you have a Scouse accent, then you must be 'on the rob'.

I'm a little bit of everything. Sometimes people think I'm not Puerto Rican, because my name doesn't sound Spanish.

I always wonder whether I'll get treated differently with a different accent.

I used to say that whenever people heard my Southern accent, they always wanted to deduct 100 IQ points.

I don't think that because I am Hispanic I should therefore do Hispanic work.

Not only do I not want to be stereotyped as this Asian girl who fights - gee, what a wonder - but also I have more to offer than that.

I love Jet Li, but he looks very Chinese, and his English is Chinese-accented. He wouldn't have been the right guy to play a Japanese-American.

Coming in and out of Hollywood for pilot season, I may have to thicken my accent or hear that, physically, I'm not Latino. I not only am, but there's another 50,000 people who look exactly like me.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

I haven't gotten labeled as a Hispanic actor.

Because I had an accent, people had this impression that I was dumb.

I think my sense of humor is Jewish. I'm smarter than most white people, which is kind of a Jewish thing, too.

Many people thought I would never succeed, because I am so Russian. So Russian, hundred percent.

Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.

They made me use an accent, which I wasn't thrilled about because a lot of us, obviously, don't have them.

I was too Jewish for 'Flashdance.'

Only very rarely are foreigners or first-generation immigrants allowed to be nice people in American films. Those with an accent are bad guys.