Salma Hayek still fills a bikini properly

Good genes and an infinite amount of money are a powerful combination.

Soused Stepdad says that she wasn’t that hot when she was young. I disagree. I had quite a long conversation with her at Sundance in 2003 and felt she was possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen – even though she was wearing jeans and a winter jacket, and I obviously had to maintain eye contact.

Our meeting was accidental. I was entering a venue as she and Edward Norton were leaving, and somebody roped Norton into a conversation. (She and Norton were a couple at the time.) Salma was unoccupied, waiting for Norton to finish whatever deal he was negotiating, so I swept in. I would not normally have done this, since I would have nothing to say to Salma Hayek, but on this occasion I had a zillion questions for her because she had directed a movie that was screened at the festival, and she had filmed it entirely in Utah with a Utah crew. This is a pretty big deal at Sundance, which takes place in Utah. As usual, I had done my homework. I had read pretty much every word ever written about the film, and had attended the screening, so I know about the Utah connection and actually wanted to ask her some questions about that, which she answered (perhaps too) diplomatically. I gained no insights, but hey, I got to chat a bit with Salma Hayek.

Salma charmed everyone she worked with and everyone who saw her Q&A, including me. Unfortunately, I hated her movie. The problems with the film were not related to her direction. She inherited the project, and the script was sappy. I wrote extensively about it, if you care. It was eventually screened as a TV special, earning her a Daytime Emmy in a very narrow category that she pretty much had to win, like “Best director of a Salma Hayek movie that was made to amuse children with severe learning disabilities.”

(I just looked up the real category: “Outstanding Directing in a Children/Youth/Family Special.” The category was so narrow that there was only one other director in her category, and the other director probably should have won, given that it was a Daytime Emmy, and Salma’s film was aired on Showtime in the evening. Perhaps the organizers were embarrassed to give the other director a default Emmy as the only production in the entire category. More likely they just wanted Salma’s star power in the Daytime Emmy show.)

Anyway, enough people like the film to earn it a respectable 6.5 rating at IMDb, and many of the user comments consist of enthusiastic praise, so I suppose I’m just an cynical, elitist Grinch.

Despite the Emmy, Salma never directed another feature film, for reasons unknown to me.