Salma Hayek once threatened a filmmaker with legal action

Actress Salma Hayek says she threatened filmmaker Ivan Reitman with legal action after he refused to see her during an audition because they "hated" her.

The 50-year-old had gone to audition for a role in a film. She was originally told the lead part would be altered to suit her native language, but her representatives were later told they would be "crazy" if they thought they would accommodate her for anything other than a "bimbo" part, reports The Guardian newspaper.

"I've never said this to anyone, the name of the director, but it was Ivan Reitman.

I was screen-testing for the lead in a film and they said that it was not written Latin, but they wouldn't mind changing it," she said.

"I learned the script but when they sent me the pages for the audition, there was none of the things I had learned, it was another role. So my agent called them and they said, 'Are you crazy? She's Mexican. We can change the race of the bimbo, but not the lead'.

"And they said 'Absolutely under no circumstances'. So I said, 'Okay, you tell them that they either see, or I'm going to sue them'.

"And they said 'There's no point in her coming, even if she had been the best audition she would have never gotten the part but now we hate her. Does she want to come knowing that we detest her?'"

Source: The Guardian