Stepping out in the pouring rain, Salma Hayek and her adorable daughter Valentina Pinault were all business in New York City as they attended a performance at Lincon Center this afternoon (October 9).

The 43-year-old actress will soon begin promoting her latest flick, Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, and it appears she has co-star John C. Reilly to thank for making her feel great while on the set because he thought she looked beautiful behind a beard!

Salma plays a bearded woman in the carnival movie and admits she felt far from attractive as her facial hair was being patched on daily.

“I never got used to wearing the beard but John C. Reilly made me feel good about it, telling me I looked so hot with the beard,” she says. “It’s like people telling you, when I was a whale and swollen from the pregnancy and I’d never looked worse in my life, and they say, ‘You glow!’ They have no words to tell you how bad you look. Even though I felt gross with the beard, they made me feel good about it.”

And she fears she may have scarred her daughter for life — because she had to show her mommy with a beard.

“She was with me the whole time and I had to show her the beard otherwise I wouldn’t see her the whole day; it’s not like I could put it on and off,” she adds. “She was seven months old when she saw the beard and she knew it was make-up so she was not freaking out. I explained to her the process and she was fascinated looking at it. She kept wanting to touch it because it was fake.”