Salma Hayek Once Played A Sexy Bad-Ass Killer In A Movie Everyone Forgot About
Salma Hayek starred in the the action thriller Everly in 2014
It may be hard for some of us to fathom, but Salma Hayek’s film and television career is in its 35th year. Over that time span, Hayek has titillated audiences with her sexy performances and tickled the funny bone with her comedic endeavors. While many of her roles and films have been memorable, there have been a few that have slipped through the cracks.
Not each and every film Salma Hayek has been involved in has held the gravitas as some of her movies such as From Dusk Till Dawn, Frida, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Savages, and Magic Mike’s Last Dance. One of the films in Hayek’s vast library that didn’t receive much play time is Everly.
In Everly, Salma Hayek is trapped in sexual slavery and forced to work for a Japanese crime lord. But she exacts revenge over the course of the film.
Produced in 2015, the action thriller movie harkens back to Salma Hayek’s Desperado days when she routinely found action films to her liking. Everly sees Hayek playing the title character, a woman who is trapped in sexual slavery, relentlessly abused and assaulted as she is forced to work for Japanese crime lord Taiko.
Things go from horrible to unfathomable for Everly when the vicious crime lord discovers that she has been working with the police to try to bring down his criminal empire.
Check out Salma Hayek in the trailer for Everly:
Taiko sends enforcers to her apartment, thinking they will have no problem eliminating Everly. But little do the thugs know, she has a surprise in store for them. Everly has hidden a gun, she knows how to use it, and does so with lethal results.
But Taiko is not even close to being done with Everly. He wants to make her suffer as if forcing her into prostitution wasn’t bad enough. He sends more hired killers after her and also offers a nice bounty to the other prostitutes in her building if they will take her out.
Complicating matters for Everly is her mother and young daughter. Everly tries to explain to her mother the danger they face, but her mother is a stubborn lady and refuses to go anywhere without Everly in tow.
Now, Everly is forced to fight for her freedom, as well as that of her mother and her daughter. The action is tense, and the violence is gratuitous but is fun to watch Salma Hayek turn back the clock and become the badass we’ve seen in the past.
Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, Knights of Badassdom) directed Salma Hayek in this thriller from a script written by Yale Hannon. Laura Cepeda co-stars as Everly’s mother while Hiroyuki Watanabe plays the sadistic Taiko. Everly’s lack of box office numbers was affected by the fact that the film was first released on iTunes, then only getting a very limited release in movie theaters.
Joe Lynch directed Everly with a script from Yale Hannon.
Prior to Salma Hayek signing on to play Everly, Kate Hudson was slated to play the lead character. There was no reason for Hudson’s departure. Hayek is no stranger to replacing actors previously earmarked for a role.
Just recently she replaced Thandiwe Newton as the lead in Magic Mike’s Last Dance as Newton cited “family matters” as to why she needed to step away. Of course, rumor famously put Magic Mike himself, Channing Tatum, and Newton, at odds on set which supposedly was the real reason for her departure.
2014’s Everly would not be the last time that Salma Hayek would lace up her action movie boots. In 2017 she starred opposite Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson in the action comedy, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, then reprised her role in the 2021 hit action comedy, Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard. Both films were loaded with action.
“I said, ‘Forget it,’ I said, ‘God knows what kind of grandmother they want me to play.’ I’m used to being [told] I’m going to be the extra or the old prostitute. And then they said the director was Chloé Zhao, and I said, ‘Okay! Let’s have the meeting!'”
Salma Hayek on joining the MCU
After those two films, and more recently, Salma Hayek joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe when she took on the superhero role of Ajak in Marvel’s Eternals. In the comic books, her character of Ajak was male, so the change to make him female was met with concern.
Hayek herself was reluctant to join the MCU, especially for this project as she felt Marvel was only wanting her for a small cameo and not in a role important to the story.
“I said, ‘Forget it,'” Hayek said to Entertainment Weekly. “I said, ‘God knows what kind of grandmother they want me to play.’ I’m used to being [told] I’m going to be the extra or the old prostitute. And then they said the director was Chloé Zhao, and I said, ‘Okay! Let’s have the meeting!'”
That meeting turned into an offer, which Salma Hayek gladly accepted once she found out who she would be playing. Unfortunately for Hayek and the rest of the Eternals cast, the movie didn’t win any MCU fans over. But again, it was still nice seeing Hayek take on another sexy bad-ass action role.
