Salma Hayek was "haunted for many years" by not participating in the Olympics.
The 54-year-old movie star was a highly talented gymnast as a child and was picked by the Mexican team to represent her country but her dad Sami refused to let her compete, thwarting her ambitions.
But after she made it big in Hollywood, the ‘From Dusk till Dawn’ actress eventually realised that her father made the right choice for her as she has led a great life.
Speaking to OK! magazine, she said: "There was a road I didn’t take, which haunted me for many years. When I was very little, I was drafted for the Olympics in gymnastics.
"And my father refused to allow me to go to a boarding school at nine years old in another city where I was to be exercising six hours a day. I resented my father. He said, ‘I didn’t want you not to have a childhood.’ No I’m so glad I didn’t take that road because I really like my life."
Since then, Salma – who has 12-year-old Valentina with husband Francois-Henri Pinault – has been shocked by her "witchcraft instincts" that have led her to to make the right choices in her career and her private life
She continued: "I am very, very grateful for and surprised by my kind of witchcraft instincts, because a lot of the things I do impulsively make no sense even to me. But I just know I have to do them. And in terms of love, I think all the roads I took led me to discover the greatest love of my life, and the greatest love of my life brought me the other great loves of my life – my daughter and my stepchildren. And so, in my case, I was very, very, very lucky not to take the other roads. And some of them looked quite good."