Salma Hayek's Imposter Syndrome ruined her sports illustrated cover? She reveals shocking experience

Salma Hayek never fails to mesmerise the audience with her looks. On Tuesday, the 58-year-old actress was announced as one of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit's 2025 cover models.

While the producer was discussing her massive milestone during a live appearance on the Today show, Hayek revealed that she had regrets after accepting the gig, the PEOPLE reported.

'Bathing suits never fit me'

Salma Hayek revealed she almost backed out of her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover shoot. She said she struggled with imposter syndrome and tried on over 100 bathing suits for the shoot.


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"I said yes and then when it was time to do it, I tried to back out," Hayek recalled. "I said, 'No,' because the bathing suits never fit me, how am I gonna do this? There's nothing my size — I always suffer.' " She explained to co-anchors Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin that she "had a very bad case of imposter syndrome."

"I still can't believe it," Hayek said. "I remember when I was young and hot, I used to look at this magazine. I wanted to see who was the new gorgeous model, the new girl of the moment. And it never crossed my mind that I could be on that cover because they didn't look like me. My body's not necessarily the model type and I never thought that was a possibility. And for it to happen when I'm 58? It's really shocking."

Hayek got '200 bathing suits'

To help calm her nerves, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit sent Hayek "200 bathing suits" — though the Oscar-nominated star didn't get to them all.

"I tried more than 100," she said. "A lot of them needed to be altered."

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The alterations were completed in Los Angeles, and the finished suits were packed into Hayek's luggage along with a host of essentials. “All my creams, all my beauty remedies to hide everything, all my medications,” she noted. But somewhere between Hollywood and Mexico—the location of the photoshoot—the entire collection vanished.

"They lost the suitcase," Hayek said. "Nothing was there!"

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Luckily, Sports Illustrated had "a small selection of extras" on set for Hayek. "That's what I wore," she shared. "So you will see, they don't all fit perfectly. If it's extra small, it was accidental!"

Hayek took all of this as a bad sign at first. "I was really not confident and very nervous," she said. "I showed up feeling, 'What am I doing here?' "

All that changed when she stepped on to the beach and a whale jumped behind her.

"It was just as I walked in," Hayek remembered. "And all of a sudden I felt, 'This is magical. This is my land. I'm 58, I'm doing this. My generation, especially Mexican women, we thought we were going to be dismissed at 35. And I got so excited, I felt really free. I put on Bad Bunny, I started dancing, I loved it!"