For her first trip to Harvard, Salma Hayek collected some unique souvenirs. As the host of The Harvard Foundation’s 21st Annual Cultural Rhythms show last Saturday, the half-Lebanese, Mexican-born “Frida” actress received marriage proposals from Harvard students (shouted from smitten audience members) and even saw other performing students “naked.”

Or so says the actress-producer-director. “When you are dancing, you are really naked,” Hayek says in an interview with The Crimson.

“I got to see a lot of the students... I almost felt I was spying on them,” she continues, explaining her appreciation of this chance to peer into performing students’ “natural states of mind” during Cultural Rhythms, a program that celebrates Harvard’s diversity.

For their part, the students didn’t seem to mind. During the Saturday production, the five-foot-two actress gamely engaged performing students’ requests to learn and demonstrate steps from their group dances. Hayek even offered to use her “Hollywood connections” to help one performing musical group, Sangeet, record their South Asian fusion melodies.

Hayek insists that her eagerness to learn from the students was not just for show. “I feel glad everybody is very busy studying here because if they came out to Hollywood, they would take our jobs,” she admits.

In particular, Hayek says she was impressed with and most surprised by the “balance” she observed in Harvard students, who could “make it through the week” and still muster the “energy and intensity” apparent in their Cultural Rhythms performances.

Hayek says that the atmosphere of “young minds, whole spirits, and versatility in sound and color” provided “the best kind of reward for me.” After all, she continues, “One of the most important things for an artist…is artistic and creative stimulation.”

Recently returned from another university speaking engagement in Mexico, Hayek has lately charmed college audiences and also found herself “rejuvenated.” As it turns out, Hayek is an across-the-board crowd pleaser, and students have in the past consistently and “cross-culturally” requested that Hayek be a guest to Harvard, according to Harvard Foundation Director Dr. S. Allen Counter.

But it hasn’t always been that way. At the beginning of her acting career in the U.S., Hayek struggled to convince film executives that she could appeal to the American mass market as a Latina leading lady. In fact, at a press conference, Hayek recounts a time in her career when she was asked to visit American soldiers in war-time Kosovo during one Thanksgiving, as a sort of “Marilyn Monroe-like figure” to buoy military spirits. As she tells it, her “Why’d they pick me?” wondering was answered when she discovered that many of the soldiers serving were from Hispanic backgrounds.

Since then, as Counter points out, the make-up of Hayek’s fan base has changed dramatically. She has been nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award (for 2002 film “Frida”) and has established herself as both a mainstream bankable star (with films such as “Wild Wild West” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”) and a director to be reckoned with (she won an Emmy for directing the Showtime movie “The Maldonado Miracle”). In fact, in 2004, Hayek ended the year as Hollywood’s highest paid Latina actress, earning approximately $20 million for her films.

But despite her burgeoning Hollywood appeal and fan base, Hayek has remained close to her Mexican roots and is a passionate activist and generous benefactor for social causes affecting her native country, including domestic violence prevention. Indeed, as the Harvard Foundation’s 2006 Artist of the Year, Hayek was recognized for both serving as a dedicated advocate for humanitarian causes and for her achievements in film.

Of the award’s companion Cultural Rhythms host duties, Hayek jokes—referring to the campy roasting of celebrities Halle Barry and Richard Gere, who were also on campus recently to receive honors as the Hasty Pudding Man and Woman of the Year— “I have it easy.” She continues explaining her appreciation for the Harvard cultural festival, “Everybody is so unique in their own dance... I [also] think that’s where everyone came together here—in a celebration of differences.”

Hayek will next appear in “Ask the Dust” with Colin Farrell, due out later this month.

—Staff writer Vinita M. Alexander can be reached at valexand@fas.harvard.edu.