Take Salma Hayek and Blake Lively. The magnetic Mexican Oscar nominee and the foxy flaxen-haired California girl first met at a dinner thrown by Vogue editor Anna Wintour. At that point, last summer, Lively was already attached to Oliver Stone's moody, violent drug drama Savages. Hayek had been approached by Stone, but nothing was official, so no one, not even her husband, Francois-Henri Pinault, knew she mi ght do the film. And she didn't bring it up at the soiree.
"I wanted to talk to you, but I wasn't hired," says Hayek to Lively. "Oliver had talked to me about it and said he wrote it for me but didn't offer me the job. I wanted to ask Blake, 'Did he mention me to you?' Some of the financing came from France, and people were telling Francois that I was in an Oliver Stone movie. He said, 'You're doing an Oliver Stone movie and you didn't mention it to me?' I didn't know about it! It was very funny."
So the y danced around the topic, without ever broaching it. "I wasn't going to mention it. I wanted to talk to Salma about it, too, because I have a relationship with two men, but our relationship is the most intimate in the film," recalls Lively.
Finally, Hayek got the movie and officially met Lively at rehearsals. And that's when their mutual admiration society was formalized. "I remember you showed up in knee-high Balenciaga sandal gladiator boots. They were gorgeous. I was like, 'Ah, this is how I have to dress.' Not because I was being competitive. But because I saw her and was like, wow," sighs Lively, 24, who doesn't use a stylist and is fluent in the language of Seventh Avenue.
Says Hayek, 45, looking at Lively, immaculately attired in a flowery Monique Lhuillier minidress: "She looks for any excuse to dress up and go shopping. She's the ultimate fashionista. Today we were looking at this older lady that was so put together, and I said to Blake, 'That's going to be you.' "
On Friday, their dynamic turns decidedly darker in Savages. Lively is O (as in Ophelia), one-third of a passionate relationship with two male pot growers. She's kidnapped by fearsome drug lord Elena (Hayek) because of a business dispute. What happens next can only be described as brooding and brutal, and it hinges on the bond between O and Elena.
"Salma brings fire and humor, while Blake carries the emotional arc of the film," says Benicio del Toro, who plays one of the film's baddies. "They're both talented, beautiful and generous …. Even though they're both beautiful, they're not afraid of looking less than beautiful for the sake of the character."
Getting away from 'Gossip'
Lively, best known for playing charismatic, charming and spectacularly clad Serena van der Woodsen on the CW's Gossip Girl, has taken the gritty route before as a troubled single mother in Ben Affleck's 2010 drama The Town. Aside from the appeal of working with Stone and collaborating with him on developing O more fully, Lively was excited by the prospect of playing someone so diametrically different from her day job.
"I try to go away from what's familiar. After five years on the show, you try to go on to something else," she says. "Gossip Girl isn't a character that I can say I proudly developed and got to see from start to finish. With a TV show, you can't do that. You don't know if you're on one episode or on for six years. Our characters take place in this sensational reality."
At one point, Lively sat with Stone for 10 hours to flesh out O and make her more believable, and rewrote scenes with Hayek. The latter jokes that should Lively be desperate for work someday, Hayek would hire her to write for her production company. In particular, though, Lively worried that audiences wouldn't understand how O could be part of the threesome with no sense of jealousy.
"People had to empathize with this, and they have to believe in the relationship, or none of the story matters. We couldn't figure out the triangle. And Salma said, 'The boys have to love each other more than you. Otherwise, they wouldn't share you,' " says Lively.
She has little in common with Ophelia, a languid, deeply sexual and highly cynical child of privilege who easi ly shares her affections â€" and body â€" with two best friends. "I always look for characters that are nothing like me. I think the thing that I brought to her that was a little more me was the idea of the hopefulness, the belief in goodness. I'm a little more Disney-minded. I gave O a little bit of that," says Lively.
Hayek, meanwhile, was eager to showcase the different sides of Elena: She's a mother, a boss, a brat and a ferocious force of nature. "For me, it was important to give a lot of detail to this character. There's not enough space to tell her story. For me, it was important to make her more than one-dimensional."
How private is too private?
To that end, Stone was and continues to be happy to help out, e-mailing Hayek tips on promoting the film. "He told me I was wearing the wrong dress for the premiere because of the color. I don't look mean enough," she says with a laugh.
The actress, married since 2009 to French billionaire Pinault and the mother of daughter Valentina, 4, splits her time between France and California. She's affectionate and chatty, touching your leg or arm to drive home a point, say, about her love of dessert, while Lively is more reserved. She won't delve into her off-screen life, which includes her relationship with actor Ryan Reynolds.
"You don't share it. My family worked in this business. It was always their job. It wasn't a lifestyle. You don't mix the two. Once you start blurring those lines, that's when it gets messy. This is my job. The problem is that people follow you to your home. That's so upsetting," says Lively. "I don't want to share my personal life. But when you don't, they make things up. I think, wow, I have su ch a spicy life. When you're on a show that's so salacious, they want to draw those parallels. I'm really lucky I don't have kids right now, because I would have decapitated a few people."
"Or you can just move to France," says Hayek, because there, kids' faces have to be blurred in paparazzi shots.
Balance 'works out for me'
Hayek's more forthcoming about navigating between her family and films; she is shooting Grown Ups 2 in Boston.
"It's working out really well. (Valentina) is really smart, and she's really young. If later on it gets in the way of her development, I'll just stop working. For right now, it works," she says. "I work mostly in the summers. I usually work in the Sandler family or with Kevin James. I'm rea lly good friends with the wives, and the kids are the same age. It works out for me. For right now, I go day by day. If in the future, she has to stay in Paris and it's too much of a separation, I'll stop working."
Hayek doesn't go it alone. "I get a lot of help from my husband. You have to have a partner. When I get freaked out, he's like, 'Don't worry, it will work itself out. How can I help you?' He calms me down. I am more hysterical than he is. It's very easy to bail out. A lot of women don't get support in their professional lives from their husbands," she says.
Says Lively: "It's very clear when you're around Salma that her family is her priority. She's there for her work. She does everything 100%. You don't ever feel that her attention is divided. She's equally a wife and a mother."
And a foodie. Both women, despite their svelte physiques, share a passion for edibles, splitting apple pie an d chocolate cake during their joint interview.
"We don't stop eating. I don't cook by recipe. I eat so much, I understand flavors and what goes well together," says Lively, a fan of the Food Network's Chopped cooking competition.
Hayek, too, says she's at home in the kitchen: "I love to watch Top Chef in France. It's hard core. I cook. I go to the market, and I see things, and I buy and make whatever is in the refrigerator. I am an artiste."
Affirms Lively: "Every time I go over to her house, there's such good food."
And the start of what seems to be a tasty relationship.
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