Salma Hayek has revealed she's glad she waited until her 40s to become a mother, as it gave her the opportunity to focus on her career first.

The Mexican-American actress and producer, 56, shares 13-year-old Valentina with French husband Francois-Henri Pinault, whom she married in 2009, but admits that before meeting her future husband, she wasn't sure having kids was on the cards for her.

'It was not very hopeful for me to have children because of a medical condition,' she said in a recent interview with The Sunday Times' Style magazine, explaining that she had resigned herself to becoming a 'crazy animal hippy lady,' painting and growing her own food on her Washington State ranch. But when Pinault came along, 'he changed everything.'

She is however, glad she waited until after 40 to start a family, as by that point — after having starred in countless hit films and TV shows, including hit series Ugly Betty (which she also produced) and her love letter to Mexico, Frida, in 2002 — she had carved out a successful a name for herself in Hollywood.

'I had reached a place in my career [where] I’d done a lot of things, I was so excited to be a mother,' she said.

Explaining that by the time she got pregnant and gave birth to Valentina in 2007, she 'didn’t feel like it would take anything away.'

Pinault is the chairman and CEO of luxury fashion brand Kering, which owns brands like Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Saint Laurent. She says it's the way her husband 'celebrates my madness,' finds the 'wisdom in my jokes' and 'laughs at my dramas' that keeps her 12 year marriage going strong.

instagramView full post on Instagram

Admitting: 'I don’t know a lot of people, maybe nobody, who feels the way I do about my husband.'

When she's not revelling in blissful family life at home in London (where the family moved from Paris in 2014), 54-year-old Hayek can also be seen continuing to conquer Hollywood and smash antiquated stereotypes. From her upcoming appearance in the hotly-anticipated House of Gucci biopic — starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver — to her recent lead role in action flick Hitman's Wife’s Bodyguard, where she plays Sonia, wife of assassin Samuel L Jackson, whose character Hayek decided would be going through the menopause.

'For me it was very important to put it in the plot, because it is such a real issue for everyone,' she says, explaining that it's a topic never associated with leading ladies, despite nearly 50% of the population experiencing it at some point. She's also determined to change the narrative surrounding women of menopausal age.

'People have the wrong assumption that [the menopause] is when a woman stops being sexy. The concept of giving us an expiration date for everything based on your ability to create babies or not is really unfair,' she says. 'It should not define us as women.

'For so long the concept of beauty in a woman was leaning completely to youth, and I think, f*** that shit!'

Hitman's Wife’s Bodyguard is in cinemas now.