Reports of big fortune a 'huge lie' says Hayek

MEXICO CITY, July 22 (Reuters) Mexican big-screen siren Salma Hayek has dismissed as nonsense reports that she has a 100 million dollar fortune, and said if she did she would retire and use the money to help the poor.

Local media in Mexico and Latin America reported this week that the Oscar-nominated actress had been ranked by Fortune magazine as the second-richest Latin American in Hollywood, with nearly half as much money as singer Jennifer Lopez.

''It's a huge lie. It's very, very far from reality. I don't have that amount of money,'' Hayek yesterday told Reuters, after reading an article in Mexican daily El Universal about a list of ''Latino millionaires'' in the United States.

''Somebody sent me it and I laughed. It's a bit like a joke.

Obviously I have never earned 100 million dollars and I wouldn't even want to,'' she said in a telephone interview from her Los Angeles home.

A spokesman for Fortune said he was not aware the magazine had published such a list. ''It's certainly not a list we've done. It seems somebody got their facts mixed up,'' he said.

Hayek, 39, a smoldering beauty and former star of a top Mexican soap who seduced Hollywood when she appeared opposite Antonio Banderas in the 1995 movie ''Desperado,'' is not known for flashy big-budget productions.

While famed for her curvaceous figure, she makes as many headlines speaking on violence against women and discrimination toward Hispanic migrants in the United States as she does twirling on the red carpet.

''With things as they are in Mexico, it bothers me that they put me in a group of millionaires with 100 million dollars I don't have when there are so many people dying of hunger,'' Hayek said, pausing the interview in a brief panic to scoop a drowning rat out of her swimming pool.

Born to a Lebanese businessman and a Mexican opera singer, Hayek is one of Mexico's highest-profile celebrities and has raised awareness about issues like Mexico's failure to solve a spate of brutal murders of women in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.

''If I had 100 million dollars I would have retired and would be doing more things on an altruistic level than I can now. I would have opened centers in Mexico for violence against women and many other things,'' she said.

Hayek was nominated for an Oscar for her passionate 2002 portrayal of Frida Kahlo, the legendary Mexican painter who spent much of her life in bed in a plaster cast while her artist husband dallied with other women.

Despite her reputation as a straight-talking feminist, Hayek insists she is not trying to create a do-gooder image.

Her latest project is somewhat lighter: co-producing a TV series called ''Ugly Betty,'' an American version of a Colombian soap about a plain and dumpy woman's quest for love.

REUTERS RL VC0906