Why Salma Hayek Almost Backed Out of SI Swimsuit Cover Shoot! (Exclusive)

Salma Hayek is one of the 2025 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover stars! 

The 58-year-old superstar actress chatted with “Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi at the NYC celebration for the issue, revealing that she actually almost backed out at the last minute! 

Salma explained, “It's something that you never imagined, and it's like a call out of the blue and you're trying to figure out if it's the right magazine you're thinking about, and then I got a little bit of impostor syndrome.”

She said, “I got a lot of people cheering for me to do it.”

Salma recalled thinking, "Okay, I'm gonna do it. I am gonna work out. I am going to go on a diet..." adding, "I didn't do any of that, because it was months in advance, and then as it was getting closer, 'Oh, my God, I have to...' I put some weights on my ankles and I had them, like, all day, and it was not gonna be enough time, but... At the end, you know, at the end, I wanted to back out."

Her team convinced her to go ahead with the shoot: "The convinced me it was incredibly unprofessional, that it was disrespectful, that I could not do this to the magazine three days before the shoot, four days before the shoot. I tried to explain to them that it was ridiculous in the first place and I don't know why I said yes because there's no bathing suits that can fit my body... So they brought, like, 200. We found a couple."

Hayek said it was “very meaningful” to do the shoot in Mexico. She noted, "Maybe I wouldn't have had the courage at the time, and we asked if it was okay to do it in Mexico, and it was really meaningful to me."

Salma also shared her husband François-Henri Pinault's reaction, saying, "François is proud. He's excited, he's proud, but he's French, you know? And he's the best!"

The couple will soon be empty nesters, as their 17-year-old daughter Valentina graduates high school and heads to college.

Salma gushed, “I'm okay. I'm proud of who she is, and I have worked really hard to make sure that they go away, but not too far.”

Plus, Salma shared her best advice to women of all ages about what keeps us young.

“I think you have to be the best that you can be. I think you have to have an internal life as well as an external life, and just be kind and do your best, and when you do that, life surprises you. So be open to surprising yourself and for life to surprise you because that's what keeps you young and so excited to have unexpected adventures... And you might end up God knows where."

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit hits newsstands May 17.