Latest news with #sexScenes
Telegraph
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
When was the last time you found a sex scene sexy?
Back in the day, the actress Greta Scacchi had something of a reputation for 'getting her kit off' on camera. That was the term we all used in the 1990s, and it wasn't so much sexist as highlighting a terribly British, jolly hockeysticks approach to sex. Come on, old thing. Last one to the marital bedchamber's a lemon, that sort of thing. The term popped back into my head this week for the first time in years. Scacchi, a very good actress as well as a paragon of soft-focus eroticism, has been back in the news, telling Radio Times that she finds modern sex scenes, 'the explicit rutting stuff' as she calls it, deeply unsettling. At the height of Scacchi's career – when she appeared with Tim Robbins in The Player, with Charles Dance in White Mischief and with Harrison Ford in Presumed Innocent – everything was very gentle, 'made to look beautiful and slowed down' as Scacchi said. Sex on screen at the time tended to be heralded by a bit of light jazz (often a saxophone) and conducted with tasteful arrangements of Egyptian cotton, the actor's modesty often artfully concealed. Was this good sex? Not exactly – it was inoffensive, and almost as laughable as the act itself, despite the general degree of decorum. Except we now know from the era that such scenes were not always very nice for those involved. While Scacchi was unscathed, there must have been plenty of actresses who had horrible experiences. Julia Roberts has always demanded that anything sexy be toned down, but few women have her clout. There is no doubt that any on-screen nudity from that era, no matter how convivial the circumstances, was all at the behest of a middle-aged director who was either fulfilling their fantasies or had an eye on the commercial big time. In the cold light of day, these old sex scenes feel like part of a wider power trip. Things have changed, as Scacchi points out, but the drift away from the fluffy loveliness of the 1990s has not been straightforward. You would imagine that in the wake of the Me Too movement sex scenes might not have much of a place in film and television, but this is not the case. Indeed, it often feels like there is more sex on screen than ever before, and that modern phenomenon, the intimacy co-ordinator, has their work cut out ensuring that sensitive thespians are entirely comfortable with making the beast with two backs. The end result is not neutered but often quite violent (think of Tom Hollander and Leo Woodall in The White Lotus or Emilia Clarke and Jason Momoa in Game of Thrones) which makes you wonder whether the majority of intimacy co-ordinators are, essentially, sado-masochists. Of course, they, as well as the directors and probably the actors, may well suggest that the end result is due to a sort of artistic quest, a search for emotional truth, but ultimately such scenes seem hardly less ridiculous than those carried out with soft-lighting and a burst of Kenny G. In the worst cases, the sex scenes of today veer dangerously close to pornography, which makes you wonder why the hell the actors agreed to do them in the first place. The truth is that most sex scenes are unnecessary, and it is not as if they are even serving the dirty mac brigade. I remember hearing stories of Channel 4's infamous red triangle; a warning given at the start of any programme during the mid-1980s that included risqué content, and a fillip for the lonely men of the nation (I imagine it was mainly men whose interest was piqued by the promise of a piece of mid-1970s Swedish arthouse erotica). Such needs are now pointless given that we can all seem the most extreme sexual acts on the internet. So is there ever any need for sex on screen? I would suggest that the old cliché about such shenanigans being 'integral to the plot' is only occasionally true, and usually the most effective sex scenes are not about sex at all. I dread to mention Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972) because we now know that Maria Schneider was treated abominably by the director who had decided not to tell her what Marlon Brando was about to do with a tub of Lurpak. But if we set aside the fact that Schneider was essentially being forced into filming a simulated rape while an entire crew watched her, it is a very effective scene which shows the extent to which someone who is incredibly damaged (Brando's character Paul) will try and make someone as damaged as they are (Schneider's character Jeanne). Then there is its near-contemporary Don't Look Now (1973), Nic Roeg's masterpiece about a couple (played by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) who travel to Venice after their daughter's death. What we would now call something naff like 'the grieving process' is punctuated by supernatural sightings and the most famous sex scene in history which seems to last a lifetime. It is tasteful, but unlike the noodling of 90s erotica, it feels psychologically real, as two people remain unable to articulate their lingering pain through words. There was no such thing as an intimacy co-ordinator in 1973; and it is telling that Roeg remained friends with both actors. Above all, he managed to do the undoable – he made a film that was actually sexy. The intimacy co-ordinators of today with their dreams of 'explicit rutting' should go back to their day jobs.
Telegraph
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Greta Scacchi: Sex scenes used to be beautiful ... now they're just odd
Sex scenes have degenerated from soft focus and beautiful in the 1980s to 'explicit rutting' today, according to Greta Scacchi. The actress, who made her name playing a string of femmes fatales, said the portrayal of sex had changed for the worse and was now an ugly thing to watch. 'In my 20s, the female voice was still struggling to emerge, directors were mostly male and simulated love-making was obligatory. But in the '80s, it was soft focus and made to look beautiful and slowed down, whereas now I find it really gratuitous – this explicit rutting stuff is very odd to see. 'I find it so uninteresting, ugly and very compromising for the actors,' said 65-year-old Scacchi. 'It sounds funny coming from me, because I got labelled for nudity and sex scenes, but I don't believe it was a deserved label.' Speaking to Radio Times, the British-Italian star of White Mischief and Presumed Innocent said that she would not have benefited from an intimacy coordinator when she started her career. 'No, I don't at all. Actors don't want to be choreographed into positions unless there's a real antipathy or a communication problem. Luckily, I didn't have that. 'Charles Dance on White Mischief was a very disciplined actor and so am I – we could talk and be frank,' she said. 'We were both, at the time, very beautiful and confident about ourselves physically. He was always very considerate and made sure I was comfortable.' Scacchi said the only discomfort she ever felt was with voyeuristic directors. 'That's where you need the intimacy coordinator,' she said. Her children were teased over her sex scenes, and the actress speculated that it must be '100 times worse for the kids today' because such scenes can be taken out of context and plastered all over social media. She turned down the chance to star in Basic Instinct, rejecting it as a 'male fantasy'. The role went to Sharon Stone. Scacchi is now appearing in Darby and Joan, a cosy crime drama in which she plays a widowed English nurse who teams up with an Australian ex-detective, played by Bryan Brown. The pair have a will-they-won't-they relationship, but Scacchi said she and Brown had refused to entertain the idea of a love scene, given the age of their characters. She revealed that there was tension between the actors and the writers, because the latter wanted to 'sneak a French kiss into an episode' and had also written a scene in which the two share a bed platonically on one occasion. Scacchi explained: 'If you're in your 60s or 70s and you have a kiss or a spoon, the landscape would change forever. The writer was saying, 'We don't want to show these people as being old and unable to enjoy a one-night stand,' and I said, 'Well, we don't enjoy a one-night stand'. 'One day, Bryan and I saw there was an intimacy coordinator booked and we had to say, 'Sorry, you've come under false pretences. It's not happening.''
Daily Mail
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Intimacy by Ita O'Brien: How Normal People can have great sex
Intimacy: A Field Guide to Finding Connection and Feeling Your Deep Desires by Ita O'Brien (Ebury Press £16, 384pp) When Ita O'Brien was growing up in a strictly traditional Irish Catholic family where no one ever mentioned menstruation, let alone sex, she had no inkling her career would involve sitting with actors, offering them choreographic suggestions as to how they might simulate an orgasm. Yet as a sought-after intimacy coordinator for films and television, this is exactly what O'Brien does. Not just the orgasm, but the whole build-up – which she strongly believes should be given time and space. Her mission is to make sex scenes realistic as well as sexy, while respecting actors' boundaries. While there isn't enough time in an hour-long episode to film the full 20 minutes (on average) that it takes for a woman to be 'ready for penetration', the gradualness should be hinted at. In her thought-provoking 'field guide to intimacy', O'Brien becomes an intimacy coordinator for us all, drawing on her filming work to give us helpful tips on how we should make our real-life sex lives both realistic and sexy, while respecting each other's boundaries. People have asked her to visit their bedrooms to help coordinate their sex lives. She does not do that; but this book is the next best thing. Best known for her coordination of the mutually respectful but highly erotic sex scenes between Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones 's characters in the BBC drama Normal People (2020), O'Brien is justifiably proud of her work (which also includes It's A Sin, Gentleman Jack, and I May Destroy You). Viewers of Normal People were 'profoundly affected', she writes, by the scene in which Connell (played by Mescal) and Marianne (Edgar-Jones) make love for the first time. 'Are you sure you want this?' Connell asks. When Marianne nods, he says: 'If it hurts, I'll stop.' A bit later, he asks: 'Does it hurt?' 'A bit.' And then she says: 'It's nice.' And they tenderly make love. I remember how captivated we all were by the eroticism as well as the charm of that series during the first lockdown. Those scenes 'helped viewers remember all the joy and gorgeousness of their first relationships as teenagers, and how unsure they felt'. 'The prospect of bringing something to the screen that I felt was representative of the reality of young people in love having sex was really exciting to me,' O'Brien writes. Sex is too often portrayed unrealistically. 'All that bumping and grinding, the thrusting and heads thrown back in simulated ecstasy, rarely bears much relationship to people's own experience of their sexual encounters. We see penetration after 30 seconds of kissing. Is that how it happens in your life? No!' The film world certainly needed someone like O'Brien. Before the arrival of intimacy coordinators, directors just used to tell actors to get on with it. Actress Gemma Whelan describes the multiple intimate sex scenes she had to do in Game Of Thrones as 'a frenzied mess'. 'Action! Just go for it!' the director would shout at the actors. 'Bit of boob biting, then slap her bum and go!' Of her role in the Scandi-noir series The Bridge, Swedish actress Sofia Helin said: 'It's tense every time you have to cross your own boundaries in order to satisfy a director's needs.' Dakota Johnson wishes intimacy coordinators had existed when she was filming Fifty Shades Of Grey. 'I was just kind of thrown to the wolves on that one,' she said. Things have moved on since then. O'Brien's four main tenets are: open communication, agreement and consent, clear choreography, and closure. Her sessions involve deep breathing exercises to make actors fully present in their own bodies and aware and respectful of their partner's physical presence. In one exercise, she advises them to put their right hand on each other's hearts, and their left hand over their partner's hand on their heart, and 'feel the movement of the energy and the dance between you'. That's just one of many build-up exercises, some of which verge on the woo-woo. There's a great deal about the seven chakras, and a lot of visualising of waterfalls, and your own lower body as 'the base of a tree putting roots deep into the earth'. When it comes to advising us on how to improve our own intimate lives, or at least how to avoid our sex lives from rusting up over a long marriage, O'Brien says self-love and self-esteem are most important. Look into a mirror and say: 'I choose to love myself. I am enough. I believe in myself.' She advises gazing into the eyes of your partner for 60 seconds at a time, and 'sharing your wonderings'. Gaze at the stars together, as she and her partner do; stand in bare feet on the grass in order to be fully rooted in your body. She advises us to be honest about what we do and don't want, and how that might change over time, and to dare to talk about it although it can be 'difficult and embarrassing'. She invites us to 'take a hand mirror and to explore and get to know your vulva'. I might give that one a miss. To remind us how unique every vulva is, O'Brien gives us a full page of drawings of different-shaped ones, from an art work by Jamie McCartney called The Great Wall of Vulva, which portrays 400 of them. Not a work to show to the older generation in Catholic Ireland, perhaps. Yet I liked the advice she quotes from the sex therapist Linsey Blair: we should regard intimacy as a kind of tapas menu. 'You order in bite-size chunks; you don't just think every sexual encounter has to be a three-course meal leading to penetration and orgasm.' Sometimes 'doing small things every day is more intimate than a three-course extravaganza once every three months'. 'Tuesday sex' is what she calls the ordinary stuff, which many of us might hope to keep up as a habit over a long lifetime. This is very different from 'Nine And A Half Weeks sex' (named after the film of the same name). Online porn has made too many young people think sex must be of the latter variety. Whereas, in reality, 'intimacy is rarely spontaneous' – and can be just as satisfying if you schedule it into the diary. Most importantly, O'Brien reminds us, 'it's possible to have intimacy without sex, and sex without intimacy'.
Yahoo
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dakota Johnson Recently Worked With Her First Intimacy Coordinator: 'It's Not Sexy'
Despite her decade-long tenure as a leading lady, Dakota Johnson has had to do a lot of the heavy onscreen lifting without any help. The Materialists star joked she's 'always psyched up' for sex scenes as she recently opened up about working with an intimacy coordinator the first time in her career on a movie she recently filmed. More from Deadline Dakota Johnson Delivers Damning Diagnosis On Hollywood's Risk-Aversion: 'It's All A Bit Of A Mess' 'Materialists' Review: Dakota Johnson Measures Value Of Love Between Chris Evans And Pedro Pascal in Celine Song's Sublime Romcomdram 'Rivals' Author Jilly Cooper Gives View On Intimacy Coordinators Ahead Of Disney+ Comedy-Drama's Second Season 'And she was really great,' raved Johnson on the Good Hang podcast. 'It was so cool because I'm so used to—you know, it's a sex scene. It's not sexy. It doesn't feel good. In addition to some of the more absurd aspects of filming a sex scene, like 'slamming myself into a headboard,' Johnson detailed for host Amy Poehler what goes into preparing to film an intimate sequence. 'First, I think it depends on, who is the character, and who is the character supposed to be to the audience,' she explained. 'Is she a super idolized hot girl? Is she a housewife? Is she lonely? Is she scared? Is she conservative?' Johnson continued, 'So, that's obviously character work, but then certain prep would go into it. I want to feel good in my body if I'm showing my body. My mom raised me to be really, really proud of my body and love my body. So, I've always felt so grateful for that, especially in my work because I can use it and it feels real.' Since her breakout role in 2015's Fifty Shades of Grey adaptation, Johnson has come to appreciate the importance of a good sex scene as the romantic lead of films like How to Be Single (2016), Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022), Am I OK? (2022), Persuasion (2022) and Splitsville, which debuted last month at Cannes. 'So, I guess in my work, it's something that I feel brave with and that I feel, when it's used the right way in a story, it's important,' said Johnson, whose latest film Materialists is now in theaters. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
Daily Mail
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
'It was my first kiss with a female co-star - and the best I'd ever had. But I was straight... wasn't I?': ROSIE DAY reveals how even today for young women, the road to coming out is far from simple
As an actress, I can tell you kissing and sex scenes are never sexy. They're choreographed, last hours (see – not realistic at all!) and are not particularly fun for anyone involved. Usually, when I watch them back, I have to hide behind a pillow because I look so awkward.
