Salma Hayek Pinault has had quite the career. The actress has starred in some of the most action-packed films in the last couple of decades. "Desperado" — the first film in Robert Rodriguez's "Mexico Trilogy" — is a thrilling neo-western that helped thrust her into the Hollywood spotlight with her role as Carolina, and she's appeared in multiple action- or suspense-heavy films in the years since. Her filmography includes everything from 1999's "Wild Wild West" to the more recent "The Hitman's Bodyguard" and its 2021 sequel.
While Hayek Pinault tends to portray characters in pretty dangerous situations, she has also shifted her focus to more serious roles. In 2003, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of the artist Frida Kahlo in Julie Taymor's "Frida." This nomination made her the first Mexican actress to ever be nominated for the category.
This year, Hayek Pinault will return to the screen with a much sexier role in the third and final installment of the "Magic Mike" franchise, "Magic Mike's Last Dance." Though her character and the franchise are not exactly arresting thrillers (unless you consider well-choreographed dance scenes to be thrilling, which, you're right, they totally are), that doesn't mean they are any less dangerous than the suspenseful films Hayek Pinault typically stars in. In fact, while filming one of this sequel's spicier scenes (though let's be honest, they're all probably spicy), Channing Tatum's lap dance for Hayek Pinault nearly turned disastrous.
A Dangerous Dance
Hayek Pinault was recently a guest on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" where she talked about "Magic Mike's Last Dance." In the film, Hayek Pinault receives an intense lap dance from Channing Tatum. It's a long, seductive number that required Hayek Pinault to assume many difficult positions. She tells Kimmel that the dance was extremely "challenging" and "technical."
During a moment where she was meant to be flipped upside down, things got a bit dangerous. "My legs had to be somewhere, but upside down, one loses sense of direction," she explained. "I didn't do what I was supposed to do, so in the rehearsal, I went head-down [and] almost hit my head." Thankfully, Tatum was able to hold onto Hayek Pinault and keep her from hitting the floor, but what would seem like an easy situation to get out of by just putting your arms down became complicated when Hayek Pinault realized something. "I was really concerned," she told Kimmel. "I couldn't remember if I had underwear [on] or not."
As her pants started to slip, and not wanting to make an awkward moment even more awkward, she chose to hold onto her pants instead of bracing herself with her arms. "Instead of putting my hands [down] to protect my head, I just held on to the pants," she laughed. A confused Tatum kept shouting at her to put her hands on the ground until eventually, others on set helped. Once she was standing again, Hayek Pinault says Tatum asked her, "What's wrong with you?!" to which she replied, "What's wrong with me? You nearly killed me!", making this the first lap dance in history in which someone actually wanted their pants to stay on.
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