Hayek does, however, have one womankind-saving trick up her sleeve. Next year, she’ll unveil her own beauty line, Nuance. It’s been a secret project for six or seven years, and, she says, this is the first time she’s spoken about it.
“I always wanted to do this,” Hayek says, “because my grandmother, who was a beauty, she died at 96 with no wrinkles. And you should see my mother! We have some family secrets. . . . Have you heard of tepezcohuite?”
A brief pause to supply information about your humble reporter. My mother is Mexican too, and I have spent my life laughing every time she suggested one of these remedies, invariably some kind of cactus or tree bark with a complicated Aztec name, or, memorably, using a particular seashell to make freckles evaporate. But of course now even I use tepezcohuite to heal burns — because it really does work — and it’s my children’s turn to laugh at me. So it’s somewhat surreal to be sitting opposite a movie star in the Café de Flore in Paris, listening to her tell me about things that take me back to my Mexican childhood, and even prompting her on what the next ingredient in the battle for healthy hair or wrinkle prevention might be.
“You know how if you burn the stone of the mamey fruit and rub it on your eyelashes it makes them grow?” Hayek says.
I nod. Are you using concha nacar? I ask.
“Concha nacar — of course! As a lightening cream — that’s our next step.” She leans across the table in conspiratorial excitement: “And we’re not even claiming some of the things I know this stuff can do!”
The logical leap Hayek has made is that if, for instance, tepezcohuite regenerates skin so fast that it’s used in hospital burn units, why isn’t it used in moisturizer? All the secrets passed down from her grandmother involve ingredients that are natural, cheap and readily available in Mexico. The whole project says a good deal about her character: First, take zany-sounding, family-heirloom beauty tips. Then put in a lot of research work over several years. And finally, reject any ingredient that raises the price point too high. Hayek could have produced the most exclusive range imaginable — a whole new PPR brand to herself, say — but she wanted the most democratic, so the company she chose to team up with is the American drugstore chain CVS.