Hollywood actress Salma Hayek recounts near-death battle with COVID-19

Hollywood actress Salma Hayek has opened up about her frightening experience with COVID-19 when she contracted it last year.

The ‘Frida’ star, 54, told Variety in an interview that despite how hard it hit her she refused to go to the hospital for treatment.

“My doctor begged me to go to the hospital because it was so bad,” Hayek said. “I said, ‘No, thank you. I’d rather die at home.’”

Hayek, who is of Mexican and Lebanese heritage, said she was in isolation for seven weeks at her London home, away from her husband, Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault, and their 13-year-old daughter Valentina. The actress was even put on oxygen at one point.

After recovering, Hayek went back to work in April to film for Ridley Scott’s upcoming movie ‘House of Gucci’, which also stars Lady Gaga and Adam Driver.

“It was not a lot of time,” Hayek said. “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.”

Hayek is one of many Hollywood stars who have gotten the virus and recovered, including Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson, Ellen De Generes, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sharon Osborne.

‘House of Gucci’ will feature Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani, the ex-wife of Guccio Gucci’s grandson Maurizio Gucci (played by Driver). Reggiani was abandoned after 12 years of marriage by Maurizio Gucci in 1985 for a younger woman. She was tried and convicted of orchestrating her ex-husband’s assassination on the steps of his office in Italy in 1995.

Hayek will play the role of Pina Auriemma, who was a clairvoyant friend of Reggiani.