Salma Hayek Reveals Near-Fatal COVID-19 Battle, Says She Refused to Go to Hospital

Salma Hayek is opening up about her near-fatal battle with Covid-19. Although Hayek has kept her diagnosis a secret for the better part of a year, she opened up about her battle and how she thought she wouldn’t survive in a recent interview with Variety, telling the outlet that she is still recovering from long-lasting symptoms.

After testing positive for the virus during the early days of the pandemic, the actress said she spent about seven weeks isolated in a room of the London mansion she shares with her husband, Kering CEO Francois-Henri Pinault, and their 13-year-old daughter Valentina. Her symptoms were so bad, she said, that she was put on oxygen and her “doctor begged me to go to the hospital because it was so bad.” The actress admitted that she thought she would die, though when faced with the possibility of hospitalization, “I said, ‘No, thank you. I’d rather die at home.’”

The Wednesday-published interview marked the first time Hayek has revealed her diagnosis. In November, the actress shared a video montage of the multiple times she received a COVID-19 test. Hayek has since returned to work on Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, in which she portrays a clairvoyant convicted of helping to orchestrate the 1995 killing of her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, and while she has overcome the worst of those severe COVID-19 symptoms, she said she hasn’t fully regained the energy she once had

“It was not a lot of time,” Hayek said of returning to filming. “It was easy. It was the perfect job to just get back into it. I had started doing Zooms at one point, but I could only do so many because I would get so tired.”

Despite still recovering from lingering symptoms, Hayek isn’t letting that slow her down. She is next set to appear in the upcoming release of The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard. The action-comedy, a sequel to 2017’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard, began filming in Europe back in March of 2019, though its summer 2020 release date was pushed back to August 20, 2021, due to the pandemic. In the film, the actress portrays Sonia Kincaid, with Samuel L. Jackson starring as her character’s husband. The film also stars Ryan Reynolds and Antonio Banderas. The film is slated for a June 16 release.