Matthew Perry recalls getting ‘unhelpful’ acting advice from Salma Hayek

Matthew Perry shared what it was like working with his costar Salma Hayek in his upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.

Perry, 53, and Hayek, 56, played lovers in the 1997 romantic comedy, Fools Rush In.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Perry recounted that his then-co-star had tried her best to get him out of his comfort so that he could “tap into real feelings and to be more of a leading man than a funny sitcom actor.”

“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 writes. "I did my best Chandler impression — the double-take-and-sardonic- stare thing — and said, 'Oh, OK ! Let's just spoon a little bit!’”

He added that Hayek had “long-winded ideas weren't always helpful” when it came to filming their scenes together, like one where his character is “professing [his] love” for hers.

“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. After listening to this nonsense for about twenty 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.’”

Apart from the advice bit, the actor shared that it was ‘probably’ his ‘best movie’ and praised director Andy Tennant.

“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?"