Salma Hayek looks glamorous in glitzy gown with daughter Valentina, 14, at Eternals premiere

Salma Hayek cut a glamorous figure in a sequined ruby red dress as she arrived at the Eternals premiere with her daughter Valentina Pinault at the BFI IMAX Waterloo in London on Wednesday evening.

The actress, 55, looked every inch the Hollywood siren as the striped garment glittered under the bright red carpet lights at the event.

The dress featured cut-out detail to one side, leaving her skin exposed to the cool night air as she stood with her arm around Valentina, 14, who wore a stylish monochrome dress with heels.

Salma’s flowing outfit reached right down to the ground, with a belt cinching in the waist to accentuate her hourglass figure.

Her brown hair was styled into subtle waves with strands hanging down either side of her face while she wore lashings of make-up to highlight her pretty features.

Valentina – who Salma shares with husband François-Henri Pinault, 59 – looked stylish in her attire as she teetered on a pair of tall platform heels. 

Sparkling: The actress looked every inch the Hollywood siren as the striped garment glittered under the bright red carpet lights at the event 

Family affair: Valentina – who Salma shares with husband François-Henri Pinault, 59 – looked stylish in her attire as she teetered on a pair of tall platform heels

The actress, plays the character of Ajak in the film, also posed alongside co-star Gemma Chan, 38, who takes on the role of Sersi. 

Gemma ensured she caught the eye of onlookers in a bejeweled sheer black two piece which left her midriff on show.

She wore a hood up over her bob hairstyle, with silver sequins and rhinestones dazzling as she moved.

Famous friends: The actress, plays the character of Ajak in the film, posed alongside co-star Gemma Chan, 38, who takes on the role of Sersi at the premiere

In style: Salma’s dress featured cut-out detail to one side, leaving her right arm and shoulder exposed to the cool night air

Her see-through skirt left her black underwear on display while she wore a pair of over-knee boots beneath the garment. 

Before arriving at the premiere, Salma was seen leaving her hotel where she was led to her her chauffeur-driven car by a security guard while members of her entourage followed on behind.

Eternals is a 2021 Marvel movie based on the fictional race of humanoids of the same name which appears in the American comic books.

Glitterati: Before arriving at the premiere, Salma was seen leaving her hotel where she was led to her her chauffeur-driven car by a security guard

The flick sees the Eternals, an immortal alien race, come out of hiding for thousands of years to protect Earth from their evil counterparts, the Deviants.

The cast also includes MCU’s first deaf superhero (Lauren Ridloff as Makkari) and its first openly gay superhero (Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos) who shares the franchise’s first onscreen same-sex kiss with Haaz Sleiman, who plays his husband.

In ELLE’s 2021 Women In Hollywood issue, Angelina – who is an advocate for refugees – discusses her upcoming movie and praises The Eternals’ director, Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao for her choice of casting.

Screen superstar: Members of her entourage followed on behind as she prepared to travel to the bash

‘A lot of times as an actress, you’re that individual strong woman, or you have one sister; you don’t often have this family where you really get to know women and see all the different strengths,’ she explained. 

Praising her co-stars, she continued: ‘Gemma’s grace and elegance and the way she walks through the world. Salma’s motherhood and power, and Lauren’s connection and intelligence. Everybody came as themselves.

‘Maybe there’s something to that, that the characters weren’t as far off [from ourselves]. I think there’s a secret that we don’t know that our director knows, because if you look at her films, she casts a lot of real people as their roles and it shapes her films.’

Gracious: Salma smiled as she left her hotel to greet awaiting fans and photographers in the UK capital

She reveals in the issue that when she was first contacted about the movie, she thought it was going to play a ‘grandmother’ type role.

‘I never thought I was going to be one of the Eternals. It doesn’t happen. It’s never happened to me like that before without a fight and like, ‘I can do this, please hire me!’ When she told me I was one of them, I was like, ”Me, Mexican, Middle Eastern? Me, in my fifties? I’m going to be a superhero in a Marvel movie?” Sometimes as a woman, as a woman of colour and with the age, you feel so overlooked,’ she said.

Commending Zao for ‘having balls’, she championed the director for ‘acknowledging’ her within the industry.

Oh dear: Ahead of its release Eternals was branded ‘disappointing’ and ‘ultimately unmemorable’ by critics in first reviews of the hotly anticipated MCU blockbuster (above Angelina Jolie as Thena in the film)

Ridloff, whose character Makkari is deaf like her and the first deaf superhero within the Marvel universe, reveals she jumped at the chance to ‘show representation’ on screen in a ‘refreshing’ way, while Chan praises Marvel for showing diversity on a global scale with its movies.

Ahead of its release, Eternals has already been branded ‘disappointing’ and ‘ultimately unmemorable’ by critics in its first reviews.

The superhero flick was lambasted by critics over its ‘miserably undernourished’ script, deluge of underdeveloped characters and ‘overloaded’ storyline.  

Critics were torn as the ‘refreshingly diverse’ cast of characters resulted in a group of ‘navel-gazing superheroes’ that signalled ‘two steps forwards for representation but three steps backwards for dramatic ingenuity.’ 

The Times critic Kevin Maher gave the film two stars and took aim at the 157-minute flick’s script and its ‘strange self-sabotaging energy.’

Not good: The film was lambasted by critics over its ‘miserably undernourished’ script, deluge of underdeveloped characters and ‘overloaded’ storyline (pictured left, Don Lee as Gilgamesh, Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo – and right Lauren Midloff as Makkari)

He wrote: ‘It is the characters, however, who represent the biggest shift away from the swaggering, mostly white, mostly male, mostly straight, mostly neurotypical and mostly hearing ensembles (think Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, etc) that have defined the Marvel brand thus far.’

Adding the ‘reinvented heroes work’ he continued: ‘But they are also, to paraphrase Pirandello, ten characters in search of a script. Because the one they have now, co-written by Chloé Zhao, the director (Nomadland), is derivative, messy and miserably undernourished.

‘Eternals is two steps forwards for representation but three steps backwards for dramatic ingenuity. 

Variety critic Owen Gleiberman  branded the film a ‘disappointment’ over lacking the ‘raw and real’ signature quality Zhao has brought to her other films. 

He wrote: ‘Yet as I approached Eternals, the question I was most curious about was whether Zhao, who in Nomadland and The Rider defined her filmmaking style in a unique poetic way, would carry any remnants of that mode over to the blockbuster universe… Eternals has none of that. It’s clear that that’s something of a disappointment.

He added the film feels ‘very standard’ in comparison to ‘top-tier’ team superhero films (the first Guardians of the Galaxy, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and ‘Avengers: Infinity War) and that the film ‘never transcends its conventionality’ 

He did however laud the diversity of the cast, writing: ‘Four of the Eternals are white, three are Asian, two are Black, and one is Latina. One is gay, one is deaf, and one is an androgynous tween who never grows up. 

‘Any troll who surveys this lively medley of backgrounds and temperaments only to gripe that the movie is too ‘woke’ might have lodged the same complaint about Star Trek 55 years ago.’   

The Telegraph critic Robbie Collin again gave Eternals two stars, writing: ‘The answer is the problem with Eternals in miniature: it’s constantly engaged in a kind of grit-toothed authenticity theatre, going out of its way to show you it’s doing all the things proper cinema does, even though none of them bring any discernible benefit whatsoever to the film at hand. 

‘The more muted tone rules out Marvel’s fast and flippant house style: instead, Eternals opts for solemnity peppered with wackiness, which occasionally gives it the feel of a Japanese anime series.’

Criticism: The Guardian critic Steve Rose scored the film two stars once again and likened it to a ‘sophisticated PowerPoint presentation’ due to its comprehensive mythological storyline

Empire critic John Nugent gave Eternals three stars, as it was ‘unable to escape the clichés of superhero storytelling’ but praised Zhao’s ‘assured and ambitious’ MCU debut.

He wrote:  ‘There’s a fascinating tension in Eternals between the unstoppable force of the Marvel project and the immovable object of Zhao’s artistic sensibilities. In many ways, this looks and feels nothing like any Chloé Zhao film we’ve seen before

‘And yet in many ways, this film looks and feels nothing like any previous Marvel film. There are, for example, at least a couple of firsts: a genuine sex scene, and an onscreen gay kiss — unheard of in the normally rather chaste MCU. 

‘More frequently, though, it seems to fall into familiar traps about saving the world and learning to work together as a team; when a giant, CGI-heavy battle begins to thwart another potential apocalypse, you start to feel a formula being leaned on.’

Actors: Evening Standard critic Charlotte O’Sullivan praised the film and gave it an impressive four stars, heaping praise on the cast, bar Gemma Chan’s ‘wooden’ turn as Sersi (above with Kit Harington as Dane Whitman)