It's often showbiz's up-and-comers who bare it all in movies and TV in order to break
into Hollywood.
Once they're established actors, they usually never have to go nude on screen again.
But that's not the case for every actor.
Here are some stars who have absolutely no problem doing nude scenes.
Charlize Theron made her movie debut in 1996's 2 Days in the Valley.
As Hollywood's go-to femme fatale actress, her very first major role involved some seductive
scenes with co-star James Spader.
While she went on to land parts in big movies like That Thing You Do!, Trial & Error, and
Mighty Joe Young, edgier films like The Devil's Advocate, The Cider House Rules, and others
called for the actress to bare all.
In regards to her film The Burning Plain, Theron told The Daily Telegraph in 2009:
"I don't think about it as nudity.
I read the scene and if it makes sense, I do it.
I treat it the same way as I would any other scene."
She later expressed her preference for proper angles, quipping to MTV in 2012:
"I need an angle.
I like angular nudity."
That same year, the Oscar winner told W Magazine:
"I don't have issues being naked."
At the time, Theron was promoting Prometheus with co-star Michael Fassbender, and while
she's fully clothed in a space suit in this Alien prequel, she hasn't ruled out future
on-screen appearances in the buff.
While Emilia Clarke landed the role of Daenerys Targaryen on HBO's Game of Thrones, she became
forever linked to that role.
She's parlayed it into a movie career with parts in Terminator Genisys, Solo: A Star
Wars Story, and Last Christmas, but she'll always be Daenerys to Thrones fans.
It's a role that famously saw the actress completely exposed in the show's earlier graphic
scenes.
But rumor has it that Clarke later insisted on a no nudity clause in her contract after
Season 3.
As she explained to The Hollywood Reporter in May 2019, she turned down the first Fifty
Shades of Grey movie because she worried about being pigeonholed, in spite of her Game of
Thrones scenes having taken place, quote, "a long time ago."
"And yet it is the only question I ever get asked, because I am a woman."
By the time Season 6 of Game of Thrones rolled around, however, she'd reconsidered - although
it wasn't for a love scene.
Rather, after persevering in battle, Daenerys' clothes are burned off as she emerges from
flames.
Clarke told The Sun in March 2019:
"I just wanted to come out and do an empowered scene that wasn't sexual - It was naked, but
it was strong."
Not that she's opposed to acting out the former.
Clarke said:
"You had to see those sex scenes, as they just couldn't be explained.
I get a lot of crap for having done nude scenes and sex scenes.
That, in itself, is so anti-feminist."
In 2008, a then-unknown Michael Fassbender starred in director Steve McQueen's first
film, Hunger.
When McQueen asked Fassbender to be in his next movie, the 2011 erotic drama Shame, he
was told that the role would require baring everything.
By this time, Fassbender had already starred in major films like Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious
Basterds and X-Men: First Class, but he allowed McQueen to film him exposed from any angle
he wished.
Fassbender told BBC America that December:
"You know, it was never a conversation that Steve and I had.
You know, It's like put the camera wherever you want.
I don't care.
I'm not going to sort of interfere in your storytelling.
I trust him implicitly."
It's not that the actor didn't have any inhibitions about playing a sex addict in Shame.
He later told The Guardian:
"I was self-conscious, for sure, but it was something I had to get over very quickly [...] I
had to be on the ball and not thinking about those things."
It's also worth noting that he did tell Backstage around that time that the press shouldn't
make such a big deal about it, saying:
"I have a penis, and so do half the people out there.
And a lot of the other half have seen them."
Anne Hathaway first became famous as a family-friendly on-screen princess, whether in Disney's The
Princess Diaries or Ella Enchanted.
When she started taking on edgier roles in the likes of Havoc and Brokeback Mountain,
these films called for scenes of more of an adult nature.
The 2010 romantic comedy, Love and Other Drugs, for example, shows every aspect of an adult
relationship.
So, when Hathaway had to film love scenes with co-star Jake Gyllenhaal, she didn't consider
it a big deal, telling MTV News:
"It's really such a small part of the film."
Hathaway told Vogue of her and Gyllenhaal's characters:
"These are people who have no trouble taking their clothes off [...] But they're terrified
of exposing their vulnerability - of becoming emotionally naked."
Of course, that was the ultimate goal and challenge for the actors in question.
Hathaway told Reuters:
"I was playing a character way out of my comfort zone.
All that overt sexuality is just not me [...] It's less of nudity and more of intimacy."
Lena Dunham wrote, directed, and starred in her first film, Tiny Furniture, which won
the narrative jury prize at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival.
After this, the multi-talent met with Hollywood producer Judd Apatow, who helped her launch
her own show on HBO.
Girls starred Dunham, Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke, and Allison Williams as millennials
dealing with post-grad life, work, and romance.
For Dunham's character, Hannah, those relationships involve love scenes that leave nothing to
the imagination.
In 2013, Dunham told Marie Claire that she wanted to show different body types on screen,
saying:
"I have known - and still know - that my body wasn't fitting into a traditional Hollywood
idea of the female body."
She went on to explain that she considered her nude scenes somewhat of a public service:
"I don't think I'd be able to do that if I didn't think it was essentially important
in my contribution to the world."
Chris Pine has commanded the Starship Enterprise in the future and helped Wonder Woman save
the world in the past, but it wasn't until he appeared in Netflix's 2018 original film
The Outlaw King that the actor bared all for the camera.
The movie, which tells the story of Scottish warrior Robert the Bruce, required it from
both Pine and co-star Florence Pugh, which made the actor feel it was rather unfair that
so much attention was paid to his scene.
Pine told the Mirror:
"Florence shows her entire body in this film and no one is talking about that.
Is Florence expected to do that because she is a woman and I'm not expected to do that
because I'm a man?"
He took the notion of even further when he spoke to E! News in 2018.
"Does it show vulnerability?
Does it exhibit this vestigial, puritanical shame over the human body and human intimacy?"
The scene was relevant to the character, Pine went on to tell the Mirror:
"I thought it was important to see the king and the animal.
That he is both violent and primitive and bestial, but also something else.
So I thought to see the human de-clothed and as his animal self is really important."
Angelina Jolie has always been a fearless actor.
The fearlessness that won her an Oscar for Girl, Interrupted also allowed her to tackle
explicit scenes in films like Foxfire, Gia, and Original Sin.
By the time of 2015's By the Sea, however, there was a different issue.
The actress-director had famously undergone a double mastectomy two years prior.
While discussing the film with The New York Times, Jolie admitted that she was tempted
to scrap her stripped-down scenes, but she had to be brave, saying:
"You can't change or cut this scene because you've had a mastectomy.
That would be cheating."
Having posed for the December 2019 issue of Harper's Bazaar, Jolie opened up about how
challenging it was to display her new body:
"My body has been through a lot over the past decade, particularly the past four years,
and I have both the visible and invisible scars to show for it."
Halle Berry became a star in the '90s with hits like Boomerang, Executive Decision, and
Bulworth.
However, she did her first topless scene in 2001, playing a femme fatale in the action
movie Swordfish, in which she seduces hacker, and fellow X-Men star, Hugh Jackman, into
a criminal scheme.
Although there were rumors she received a $500,000 bonus for this particular scene,
Berry told Entertainment Weekly that this wasn't true, noting that her motivation had
nothing to do with money.
"So much of my life I was afraid to [do a nude scene].
With the success of my Dorothy Dandridge project and the critical acclaim that brought me,
I finally felt that I didn't have to prove myself anymore."
Later that year, Berry starred in Monster's Ball, for which she would win an Oscar.
The film includes a harrowing scene between Berry and Billy Bob Thornton, of which she
told The Guardian:
"We both agreed to be uninhibited with our bodies [...] We just said, 'Let's service
these characters.'
We only had to do it one time, which is good, because you don't really want to have to go
there that many times."
Ben Affleck became a teen heartthrob along with his writing partner and co-star Matt
Damon in Good Will Hunting.
Leading man roles in blockbusters like Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, Daredevil, and Changing Lanes
followed, but Affleck's fans didn't get a full peek of the actor until he was older.
That came in the 2014 thriller Gone Girl.
The actor joked about it with MTV News at the time:
"I try to get it in every movie.
I think there's some brief nudity in this movie."
Getting serious, Affleck explained the reason he did the nude scene was because it was necessary
to the project itself and his character.
Speaking of director David Fincher, Affleck said:
"David said to me from the beginning like, this is a warts and all movie.
It can have no vanity.
You have to see the naked underbelly of this character."
Kate Winslet was baring it all back in the '90s, both in indie films like Jude and Holy
Smoke and even PG-13 Hollywood blockbusters like Titanic.
Her reasoning was that she wasn't necessarily the typical thin Hollywood type and felt other
women out there should get to see themselves on screen, too.
Winslet told The Sun:
"I look like the people that walk down the street.
I don’t have perfect boobs, I don’t have zero cellulite - of course I don’t - and
I’m curvy.
If that is something that makes women feel empowered in any way, that’s great."
The actress continued to choose films that required explicit scenes, including Little
Children and The Reader.
However, by 2015, Winslet told WSJ Magazine that she felt she was, quote, "probably done"
after having three children.
"I don't think I can get away with it now [...] I get really big when I am pregnant.
There are things that will never go back."
Stanley Kubrick's final film, 1999's Eyes Wide Shut, required extreme intimacy between
Kidman and her then-husband, Tom Cruise.
While discussing this trend with W magazine in 2012, Kidman revealed that she enjoys the
challenge of focusing on a character over herself, saying:
"I don't mind being naked [...] I enjoy not letting my issues get in the way of a performance.
Once I start putting all my little insecurities in my mind, I'm not actually acting."
However, it was a scene filmed for the HBO drama Big Little Lies that left Kidman feeling
shaken.
Season 1 sees the actress play a woman in an abusive marriage, and, as she told Elle
in 2017, stripping down was a component of the relationship.
"It wasn't about exploitation.
It really feeds into their relationship.
You really get their sexuality through that."
Once she finished filming a particularly difficult scene though, Kidman told The Hollywood Reporter
still felt, quote, "humiliated and devastated."
"I went home and I threw a rock through a glass door."
Since on-screen male nudity is more rare in Hollywood than female nudity, Ken Jeong decided
the famous trunk scene in The Hangover would be funnier if he went au naturale.
"So that was my idea, I pitched to Todd Phillips.
And I said, you know, 'What do you think?
Would it be cool if I did a take where I jumped out naked?'
He was like, 'You don't have to tell me twice.'"
It's worth noting that Jeong is a doctor who'd dabbled in acting since 1997.
When Judd Apatow cast him as a doctor in 2007's Knocked Up, he decided to pursue acting full
time, and thought his follow-up effort should be drastic.
"What if that doctor from Knocked Up jumped out naked?
You know?
No one would see that coming."
Jeong bore it all again in the sequel, The Hangover II, and explained to Kathie Lee Gifford
on Today how he thought size would also be good for laughs, particularly in the first
movie.
"My wife said, and I had permission from my wife to do this.
And she said, 'It will be the feel good movie of the summer because every guy will go home
feeling good about themselves.'"
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