Matthew Perry Recalls Salma Hayek’s ‘Nonsense’ Acting Advice on ‘Fools Rush In’

Samantha Bergeson
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Matthew Perry isn’t rushing to act opposite Salma Hayek again anytime soon.

After filming 1997 romantic comedy “Fools Rush In” alongside Hayek, Perry detailed in his upcoming memoir “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” available November 1, why Hayek’s “long-winded ideas” weren’t beneficial to him getting into character. Perry and Hayek play a couple who hastily tie the knot after a one-night stand leads to a pregnancy.

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Perry wrote (via Entertainment Weekly) that he tried to shed the “funny sitcom actor” approach to filming coming from “Friends.” Perry said he attempted to brainstorm “some fun strategies to tap into real feelings and to be more of a leading man.”

“Salma had tried her best, too — she came into my trailer at the start of the shoot and said, ‘Let’s just spoon a little bit,'” Perry wrote. “I did my best Chandler impression — the double-take-and-sardonic-stare thing — and said, ‘Oh, OK! Let’s just spoon a little bit!'”

Perry added that Hayek had a “very elaborate and lengthy idea” to approach a scene in which Perry’s character tells Hayek’s character that he loves her. “There’s one scene in which I’m professing my love for her. She suggested that we don’t look at each other — rather, we should look out at our future together,” Perry penned. “After listening to this nonsense for about 20 minutes, I finally said: ‘Listen, Salma,’ I said, ‘I’m telling you I love you in this scene. You look wherever you want, but I’m going to be looking at you.'”

Perry noted that “her long-winded ideas weren’t always helpful” when discussing acting with Hayek. However, “Fools Rush In” is “probably my best movie,” Perry wrote, thanks to director Andy Tennant’s advice.

“I was bouncing around doing my funny little things, and [Tennant] would take me aside and say, ‘You don’t have to do that. You’re interesting enough to watch without doing that,'” Perry recalled. “That line of thinking allowed him to pull out of me one of the best performances of my career. Could this be a different way of saying Matty, you’re enough, the words I’ve been longing to hear my entire life?”

Perry previously revealed that he had to drop out of the “biggest movie I’d gotten ever” with Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” after his heart stopped beating for five minutes. The “Whole Nine Yards” actor also issued an apology for asking why Keanu Reeves hasn’t died yet, saying he “just chose a random name” to compare to River Phoenix and Heath Ledger’s respective drug-related deaths.

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