Salma Hayek may not be the lead of any 2025 movies we know of for the time being, but she’s just become the leading lady of the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Wow, does this role look good on her. But you know what’s better than the 58-year-old looking stunning on the iconic magazine cover? The story behind it reveals all the stress and work that goes into being cover ready.
Let all the talk about how Salma Hayek never seems to age continue, because the actress known for sultry movies like From Dusk Until Dawn and Desperado just slayed her Sports Illustrated cover. Take a look:
Salma Hayek is unbelievable. Never mind that she’s just a couple years from being 60 and has rocked bikinis on her social media before, she has to be one of the most stunning women to grace this cover. Just wait until you read about the actress’ comments on the making of the cover though. I would never have expected her experience to be full of nerves and second guessing given how it turned out.
When Salma Hayek was on Today, she shared that she had a lot of “imposter syndrome” around being on the cover, and it even took some convincing to do the magazine. In her words:
When it was time to do it, I tried to back out, and I started to say ‘no’ because the bathing suits never fit me. How am I going to do this? There’s nothing my size. I always suffer. They sent me 200 bathing suits. I tried about 100. More than 100. A lot of them needed to be altered.
As every woman likely knows, bathing suits can be tricky to try on, especially if your body type doesn’t coincide with the typical “model” size. It sounds like Salma Hayek had some baggage with swimsuits that almost stopped her from being the cover model, but Sports Illustrated sent her an obscene amount of swimsuits to make sure she was comfortable. As she continued:
And then I was in L.A. So we did all the alterations in L.A. I took the suitcase with me to Mexico because, of course, we shot it in Mexico… and guess what, they lost the suitcase. They had a small selection of extras there that, you know, went with the magazine and that’s what I wore. So you will see, they don’t all fit perfectly. If they’re extra small, it was accidental.
My goodness! As Hayek shared, after going through all the trouble to try on one hundred bathing suits and get a few of them altered for the shoot in Mexico, her bag was lost somehow, and she had to go with whatever was there on the day. Of course, you would never know it, but it is funny to hear why they are “extra small” in her book. She also said this about the experience:
And I was really not confident and very nervous. And then, I showed up feeling like ‘What am I doing here?’ The first shot is on the beach. I stood up and a whale jumped behind me, which they didn’t get because it was like just as I walked in and all of a sudden I felt, this is magical. This is, like, my land. I’m 58, I’m doing this.
I don’t know about you, but there’s something really refreshing about Hayek’s comments about her Sports Illustrated cover. She makes it look effortless, like cover models before her, including Megan Fox, Martha Stewart and even Lori Harvey doing the cover on her own terms. It’s not easy to let go of one’s insecurities and pose for a magazine even when you’re Salma Hayek!