Jessica Alba Was Afraid of Emulating Salma Hayek’s Dance Scene in ‘Sin City’
Actor Jessica Alba famously co-starred alongside Bruce Willis in the feature Sin City. But the Fantastic Four star had to step out of her comfort zone when she was cast as a dancer in the flick. The director told Alba that her dance choreography would be similar to Salma Hayek’s in From Dusk Till Dawn. But that just made Alba even more nervous about the take.
‘Sin City’ director wouldn’t let Jessica Alba get a choreographer for her dance moves
Sin City director Robert Rodriguez was perhaps the biggest reason why Alba wanted to do the film. She was already a fan of Rodriguez’s work, and wanted the filmmaker’s validation more than she wanted a role in his movie.
“I didn’t really know it was a comic book when I saw that he was directing something. I just tell my agents every month, ‘What’s Robert doing? I want to do something with him,’” she once told Radio Free. “And one of my agents has a relationship with Robert and said, ‘You got an opportunity.’ And I was like, ‘Excellent!’ So I took that opportunity and ran with it. I auditioned the old fashion way, went in for the casting director, put myself on tape, and he had to approve. And it was like a week of, ‘Does he think I suck?’ Like I don’t even care if I get the role, I just don’t want Robert to think I suck! And he didn’t think I sucked. And he came down, and I read with him, and at that time I looked at the graphic novel and I saw the pictures.”
Alba impressed Rodriguez enough for him to cast her as Nancy in the film, who was a stripper and Willis’ love interest. In one scene, Alba’s character is dancing seductively on top of a bar counter. It was one of the more terrifying takes for the actor, who studied real-life strippers to perfect her movements. She wanted a dance choreographer to help her, but Rodriguez refused her request.
“I was like ‘Ahhhh, Ok.’ and he’s like ‘Just feel it. We’re gonna play music and you’re just gonna feel it,’” Alba said.
Rodriguez wanted Alba to naturally react to the music. It was a technique he used on Salma Hayek when he directed her dance in From Dusk Till Dawn.
“Mind you, he’s saying Salma Hayek in Dusk Till Dawn, the sexiest dance I’ve ever seen on camera ever. And he’s like, ‘It’ll be like that.’ And I was like, ‘Like that? Are you serious? I have to live up to something.’ Like it’s iconic, there hasn’t been a sexier dance ever, and she wasn’t naked,” Alba said.
Why Jessica Alba didn’t strip for ‘Sin City’
Alba has always had a strict no-nudity policy when it comes to doing movies. She even once had an entire movie rewritten because there were too many sex scenes. However, with her Sin City character being a stripper, Alba felt stripping naked would’ve made sense for Nancy. So much so she was even willing to show more skin in the movie if she had to.
“You know, nudity was an option. We could have done it if we wanted to,” she said.
But in the end, Rodriguez agreed to Alba’s sensibilities. Additionally, the actor made the argument that dancing fully clothed would’ve made her character seem more attractive.
“Robert said that we could do it if we wanted to, and obviously it would have been more authentic. But I felt like dancing around with a lasso and chaps was going to be sexy enough. And I think being nude, for me, would have been distracting, and I really couldn’t be bottomless, for my dad would be like…I don’t know. He would disown me or something. He would freak out,” she said.
Rodriguez asserted that Alba was still able to capture the character’s spirit without taking her clothes off.
“In the world of the comic, they just think Nancy’s the sexiest person in the world. And you did that. That’s all we needed to worry about,” she said.
