Gone Girl star lifts lid on ‘hysterical’ sex scene they had to ‘make up and demonstrate to the director’
Convincing an audience of your acting is no easy feat, but it's something performers have to master - especially when it comes to sex scenes - just ask the cast of Gone Girl.
Most films these days have intimate scenes included, and have done for more than a century, but they can still be a bit awkward to watch - and that's without accidentally watching one sat down with your parents.
Some actors have been left feeling worse after taking part in them, while others
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have been more than comfortable performing unsimulated sex in their films.
For some, just pretending to have sex with someone you're just mates with off-camera is enough to leave you in tears of laughter.
2014's Gone Girl is the perfect example, starring Rosamund Pike, Ben Affleck, and Neil Patrick Harris.
Last week, the film was back in the news due to Netflix documentary American Nightmare; a real life missing persons case that some found to be similar to the book that the film is based on.
If you're not familiar with Gone Girl it follows Nick Dunne (Affleck) as he returns home to find his wife Amy (Pike) missing.
What follows is a huge campaign to find Amy, with suspicious eyes looking at Nick in a potential murder/kidnapping case. Spoiler alert - it's been out a decade at this stage - Amy is alive and well, framing Nick for her murder after discovering he had an affair.
One scene after the huge twist that we will focus on here, and again, spoil, is between Amy and her stalker ex-boyfriend, Desi Collings (Harris).
The two share a bed after Desi takes her in while she's on the run. Amy had contacted him, spreading lies about escaping Nick's abuse. But after changing her mind about her entire murder plot, Amy then murders Desi during sex to frame him for her kidnapping.
In reality, the scene was as far from the serious and tense story as possible, with both Pike and Harris left in 'hysterics' after being told to 'go rehearse' with zero directions over how the scene would go.
Speaking about the scene, Pike told Glamour: "We were in hysterics in the editing room.
"It was very funny doing [rehearsals for our sex] scene.
"[Neil and I were left alone] on that set for like two hours to make sure we could do it.
"But when it's just two of you, basically kind of f*****g on a bed, it feels so inappropriate."
Harris opened up on how unique an experience it was.
Speaking about how important intimacy co-ordinators are in sex scenes in modern filming, he said they simple didn't exist back in 2014.
Harris told ELLE: "Working with an intimacy co-ordinator on [comedy series] Uncoupled was actually kind of great.
"I had never worked with one before. They're required now any time you're doing a scene with any time of intimacy it makes perfect sense to have someone there that is going to be aware of anything that's planned.
"Anyone that is uncomfortable with anything can go to them and make that clear. We didn't have that on Gone Girl where I was having a proper sex scene with Rosamund Pike."
Laughing, Harris added: "They said 'go rehearse that' and then present it to us.
"We rehearsed how we wanted to have this sex scene happen and we had to go find [director] David Fincher who was in another room and he came back in and sat there and was like, 'that'll work'. But that was different times."
You can stream Gone Girl now on Netflix.
Topics: Celebrity, Netflix, Sex and Relationships, TV and Film
Tom Earnshaw