Hollywood’s sex scenes on the big screen don’t just affect the viewers.
On Monday, Maxim published “13 Actresses Reveal What It’s Really Like to Shoot a Steamy Sex Scene.” In a surprising move for a men’s magazine, Maxim retold female celebrities’ stories of how acting out sex scenes affected them in real life – from Jennifer Lawrence to Vanessa Hudgens. Many of them resorted to alcohol, while some suffered panic or asthma attacks.
“Everyone loves a good movie sex scene, right?” Maxim staff began. “Wrong: the actors and actresses who end up stripping down and getting busy for our viewing pleasure don't always have the steamy time that we see in the final cut.”
The staff proceeded to list how big name actresses coped with acting out sex scenes. The majority of them sounded disturbed – or, at the very least, uncomfortable.
Actresses Jennifer Lawrence, Lizzy Caplan and Keira Knightley all drank to survive their sex scenes.
For her first sex scene in Passengers, Lawrence admitted she “got really really drunk” and felt “very vulnerable.” Masters of Sex star Caplan similarly described herself as “so drunk” as she recalled her first "completely naked" sex scene as "horrible" (in True Blood). In A Dangerous Method, Knightley consumed shots of vodka for a spanking scene and then, later, glasses of champagne “as a celebration of never having to do that again!”
Emma Stone, in Easy A, had an asthma attack while Reese Witherspoon, in Wild, had a panic attack preparing for a three-way sex scene.
“There were small descriptions in the script, but when he started describing what we were going to do, that's when I started to panic," Maxim quoted Reese as saying. "That's, like, three per cent of the movie, but it took up a tremendous amount of fear in my mind because it's daunting ... Sometimes I was just terrified. Like a cat on a raft... 'You can't make me do it.'”
Both Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman found their scene together in The Black Swan uncomfortable. Titanic’s Kate Winslet called her nude scenes “unethical” after thinking about having a “nut sack pressed against my cheek.”
Even comedian Sarah Silverman admitted to a sex scene feeling “violating.”
Hudgens, after a sex scene with James Franco and Ashley Benson in Spring Breakers, declared, “I never want to do it ever again.”
Maxim also included Gone Girl’s Rosamund Pike, Love and Other Drugs’ Anne Hathaway, Orange Is the New Black’s Laura Prepon and actress Olivia Wilde in its list.
