Sex scenes can be really awkward for actors. There is one school of thought that actors
simply can’t authentically simulate a sex scene. But what’s the alternative? If the
script calls for a sex scene and you can’t fake it, what should you do? Well, here are
the Top 10 Times Actors Actually “Did It” On Screen.
Kieran O’Brien and Margo Stilley in 9 Songs
This movie, from acclaimed writer and director Michael Winterbottom, is named after the nine
songs that are played by eight bands in filmed live performances that are peppered throughout
the cut of the film. But it’s not the live music performances that people were talking
about when the movie came out – it was the sexual stuff. The Guardian has declared the
movie to be the most sexually explicit mainstream movie in the history of film. The lead actors
Kieran O’Brien and Margo Stilley engage in many sexual acts in the movie, unsimulated,
doing it for real, and that’s what made the film so talked about and controversial.
There is a graphic footjob in a bath, masturbation with a vibrator, masturbation without a vibrator,
genital fondling, oral sex, vaginal sex – all kinds. Winterbottom’s cinematic craft in
handling the sexual content in the film was actually praised by some critics. One wrote,
“[Winterbottom’s film] looks like a porn movie, but it feels like a love story. The
sex is used as a metaphor for the rest of the couple’s relationship. And it is shot
with Winterbottom’s customary sensitivity.” The reality of the actors actually doing it
on camera worked in the movie’s favor, since it has such honesty and ingenuity.
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Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris
This has become one of the most controversial sex scenes in cinema history since real penetration
was used to convey an anal rape scene. Marlon Brando’s character uses butter as lube and
then proceeds to rape Maria Schneider’s character. A lot has been written and debated
about the making of this scene since it is thought that director Bernardo Bertolucci
was not entirely truthful with the two actors. The filmmaker said that Brando was “a monster
as an actor and a darling as a human being,” since he became irate at Bertolucci when he
found out that he had made Schneider feel uncomfortable about the scene on the set – she
herself has said that she “felt a little raped.” Bertolucci later explained said
that it wasn’t until Brando saw the movie that he realized what had been done, and goes
on to blame Brando by saying ‘Didn’t you realize what you were doing?’ Needless to
say, the victim-blaming didn’t go over well with Brando, and the two didn’t talk for
years. Meanwhile, we can’t even fathom how poor Schneider felt.
Angeliki Papoulia and Anna Kalaitzidou in Dogtooth
Long before he made the leap to Hollywood to make twisted horror movies with a paunchy,
dorky version of Colin Farrell in the lead role, Yorgos Lanthimos made a real name for
himself in the Greek film industry. This Oscar-nominated study of incest and screwed up family life
was the one that made his voice heard on the international stage and got Hollywood interested
in him. There is one scene in the movie that utilizes a real sex act between the characters.
It has a very unsexy setup. It starts when the dad pays off one of his employees to have
sex with his son. Then the son refuses to perform oral sex on the woman, so she gets
angry and receives it from the kid’s sister instead. It establishes a very openly sexual
relationship among the family, which isn’t exactly hot or erotic, but certainly does
drive the plot of the movie and its character development forward in an interesting way.
Lanthimos explained the need to use unsimulated sex in the cunnilingus scene by saying it
was needed to establish the unusual and dysfunctional lifestyle, resulting from the isolation orchestrated
by their dictator of a father, including the incest.
Karl Glusman, Klara Kristin, and Aomi Muyock in Love
For this 2015 erotic arthouse movie, Argentinian director Gaspar Noe met a couple of actors
in a nightclub and then had them have unsimulated and unchoreographed sex on camera. Not a lot
of movies get made this way. This film, by the way, has nothing to do with the Judd Apatow
produced romantic comedy series on Netflix starring Paul Rust and Gillian Jacobs. Both
of them deal with sex and relationships, but in very, very different ways. Noe promised
that this film would “give guys a hard on and make girls cry,” which is certainly
a haunting way to begin the press tour for your movie. IndieWire thought that the movie’s
sex was “the most hardcore onscreen sex ever to screen at Cannes.” Noe said in an
interview leading up to the film’s premiere about its many genuine sex scenes, “All
the sex scenes are not as you usually see them, but shown more in a beautiful, sad,
or melancholic way.” It is also worth noting that this movie was released in 3D. 3D release
is usually reserved for Hollywood blockbusters about superheroes and wizards, not foreign
films where the actors have real sex for two and a half hours.
Robert Pattinson in Little Ashes
When Robert Pattinson played the part of iconic painter Salvador Dali in this biopic, he was
required to do a gay sex scene. This was long before the world knew him as Edward Cullen
and therefore long before he was the apple of every teenage girl in the world’s eye
– but he was still a dedicated performer and he decided that simulated sex “just
doesn’t work.” Whether or not Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca actually had sex has
been debated by historians for years. Dali/Lorca biographer Ian Gibson has said that it depends
how you define an affair. After all, sex isn’t everything in a relationship, especially for
someone like Dali, who didn’t like being touched. The writer of the movie said it’s
clear from their letters to each other that their friendship became intimate, but that
Dali found the physical part difficult and couldn’t continue on. He said they tried
to have sex, but it hurt so they couldn’t consummate the relationship. For the movie
version of that, Pattinson went for it. They shot him from the waist up while he masturbated,
in order to get a genuine shot of his orgasm face. Charming.
Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas in Original Sin
This Hollywood remake of a Francois Truffaut movie has long been rumored to have contained
real sex in its sex scene between Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas’ characters.
The two actors’ chemistry in the scene seems to be too authentic to have been simulated.
Eventually, director Michael Cristofer revealed in an interview (and also in his director’s
commentary on the home release of the movie) that it was, in fact, real – or at least,
he hinted at it. Jolie and Banderas had both approached Cristofer and told him that they
would only agree to do the scene if they were fully nude (which is an odd request for an
actor to make, that they can be more naked than they are required). When the movie was
going in to be rated before its release, the MPAA simply would not allow such graphic nudity
to be shown in theaters. They wouldn’t even allow it on the unrated NC-17 version of the
movie. That’s why the sex scene is cut so unusually and there are random fades in and
out in the middle of it. So, somewhere out there is an archive containing what is basically
an Angelina Jolie/Antonio Banderas sex tape.
Divine in Pink Flamingos
John Waters’ so-called masterpiece is a pretty disgusting movie. The guy wrote and
directed and produced and narrated and shot and edited it, so his name is in the credits
quite a few times. This is entirely his vision – and it’s abhorrent. It stars Divine,
who has been described as “the filthiest person alive,” a title that she backs up
in the final moments of the movie when she picks up some dog crap off the floor and then
eats it. That’s John Waters’ idea of art, apparently. It features scenes of exhibitionism,
sodomy, masturbation, voyeurism, rape, incest, murder, vomiting, and cannibalism. In one
scene, Divine gives a blowjob to the man who is playing her character’s son – and she
did it for real. The movie ended up getting banned in a bunch of countries, including
in Switzerland and Australia. After a certain amount of time had passed, you could pick
up an uncut version of the film on VHS tape in Australia, but one has to wonder why you
would. It’s some people’s cup of tea, but for better or for worse, it is a disgusting
film, exactly as it set out to be.
Chloe Sevigny in Brown Bunny
Chloe Sevigny found herself surrounded by some serious media attention back in 2003
when she took part in the movie Brown Bunny. She had become a very well known name in the
world of independent cinema, after her stellar turns in the movies Kids and Boys Don't Cry,
the latter of which was praised as a landmark for mainstreaming understanding of the LGBTQ
community. But then she did Brown Bunny, in which she was required to perform unsimulated
oral sex on the film's director, Vincent Gallo, who was also her co-star. This was before
Paris Hilton's sex tape had been released and long before millions of hours of graphic
internet porn was readily available to people across the world. So, graphic sexual content
was not as much of a commodity and the talk of the town leading up to the Cannes Film
Festival premiere of the movie was that Sevigny's career was over. Some media outlets even falsely
reported that the actress had been dropped by her agency, although they continue to represent
her to this day. These people seriously needed to chill out. Of course, that movie (and specifically
that scene) did not end up being the career-ending devastation for her that it was tipped to
be. In fact, she had her first movie as a director released just last year. Sevigny
doesn’t regret the film at all, saying it was a way for her to reclaim herself, show
the world what she stands for, and push the envelope. Pushing the envelope is a pretty
good motivation.
The Penthouse Pets in Caligula
This movie about the rise and fall of the Roman Emperor Caligula starring Malcolm McDowell
was initially conceived as a feature-length Hollywood porno. Penthouse magazine founder
Bob Guccione produced the movie with the intention of making a full-length porno film with a
proper story and everything. Comedy magazine the National Lampoon were making their own
comedy movies and raking in the big bucks, so why couldn’t porno magazine Penthouse
make their own porno movies and do the same? So, Guccione came up with the idea to do a
Hollywood biopic of the sex-obsessed Roman Emperor Caligula. This way, he could get a
Hollywood budget in to tell an important historical story, but he could also fill the movie with
sex scenes. Everybody wins! The theme of the screenplay, written oddly enough by Gore Vidal,
was that. But the theme of the finished film is that sex is awesome! This is because Guccione
wanted to make it even sexier, so he got the Penthouse Pets in to shoot some genuine sex
scenes. There are some brilliant actors in this movie – ranging from Helen Mirren to
Peter O’Toole – but the Penthouse guys weren’t interested in making what society
deems high art, and made a porno instead.
Everyone in Nymphomaniac
Lars von Trier has always been known for making dangerous movies. This sexy two-part art film
was tricky to get made. In the end, he had to make it as a co-production between four
European countries – Belgium, France, Germany, and Denmark – just to get together the relatively
small budget of $4.7 million. The movie is about a woman reminiscing about her sexual
exploits, and the idea was that all of the sex in the movie would be real. The 325-minute
arthouse epic stars some big names, like Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stacy Martin, Stellan Skarsgard,
Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe, and Connie Nielsen.
LaBeouf explained that there was a disclaimer at the top of the script that said everything
would be for real. All the illegal stuff would be shot in blurred images, but otherwise,
everything was really happening. LeBeouf went on to say “Von Trier’s dangerous. He scares
me. And I’m only going to work now when I’m terrified.” Some of the actresses
used prosthetic vaginas, but other than that, closed sets were used and the actors actually
did it. During its advance screening at Sundance Film Festival, the first part of the movie
went under the title "Film X" in order to keep it a secret from festival-goers. It was
a highly anticipated film in the arthouse movie community since it was being directed
by Lars von Trier, the king of the European arthouse filmmaking scene, and people who
found themselves in the secret advance screening freaked out. It's not a sexy movie that glamorizes
the sexual content. In fact, von Trier considered it to be the third chapter in what he has
unofficially termed the "Depression Trilogy." The final cut of the film, including both
parts edited into one long movie, runs at over five and a half hours in length.
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