A quick scroll through her Instagram suggests that she has spent the entire summer season drinking from coconuts and slurping the heads off butter-soaked langoustines while dressed in nothing but a bikini and a diaphanous sarong. Holiday photos like this (and this) read less as a “wish you were here!”, and more as a tacit audition to be the next Bond girl. 

Take this image as an example. Not only was Hayek presenting the onlooker with a (perhaps poisoned?) chalice, she looked as though she could have decapitated them in one fell swoop with her vertiginous peep-toe platforms – very possibly by Pleaser, where Lady Gaga shops for stripper heels. Unlike most other celebrities summering in Portofino, Hayek chose not to wear a comfortable Castañer wedge for a reason Of course, the Bond girl looks a little problematic through a 2023 lens.Little more than cinematic decoration, these women were written into 007’s early outings as Salomes and Jezebels and Liliths. 

They would emerge from the sea in slow-motion and then say something suggestive and then get murdered. But perhaps Hayek (who screen-tested for the role of Jinx in 2002’s Die Another Day – a part that ultimately went to Halle Berry), could rehabilitate the archetype, her nails painted the same shade as the blood-red soles of her platforms.