When it comes to sex scenes in film, there is always a great deal of voyeuristic interest in knowing which are ‘real’ and which aren’t.
Many are often shocked to find out that not only have actors actually been involved in unsimulated sexual scenes in films, but some are actually quite well-known.
Here is a list of every Oscar nominated actor to have been involved in an unsimulated sex scene.
Mark Rylance
Rylance appeared in a 2001 film called Intimacy in which he took part in an unsimulated sex scene. He played one half of a pair of strangers who meet once a week in order to have emotionless sex.
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Sadly, Rylance went on to reveal that he regretted doing the film, stating that the director Patrice Chéreau, who died in 2013, had put ‘undue pressure’ on him to do the sex scene.
Thankfully, it didn’t hold back Rylance’s career – as he went on to develop a legendary resume of films.
The actor is not just Oscar-nominated either; he actually won an Academy Award back in 2016 for his part in Bridge of Spies.
He won Best Supporting Actor in the Spielberg espionage thriller, saying on stage: “I've always, I've always just adored stories. Hearing them. Seeing them. Being in them.
“So for me to have the chance to work with, I think, one of the greatest storytellers of our time, Steven Spielberg, has just been such an honour.”
Chloë Sevigny
The Oscar-Nominated American actress appeared in a deeply controversial film called Brown Bunny in which she performed oral sex on her co-star Vincent Gallo, who was also the director and writer of the film.
In 2004 when it came out, the fact she had done this was so controversial that there were even unfounded rumours her agency had dropped her as a client. It did not, as many predicted, ruin her career – as she just last year starred in the highly successful Monsters season based on the Menendez Brothers.
In 1999 however, five years prior to her unsimulated sex scene, she actually was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Boys Don’t Cry. The film was a dramatization of the real-life transphobic murder of Brandon Teena, with Brandon’s girlfriend Lana Tisdel portrayed by Sevigny.
She said in a later interview of the film: “I feel like it was important to the world. Not even one community in general.
“As far as building tolerance and acceptance and educating people and portraying a person and seeing the violence acted out against them and how heart-wrenching it is and humanizing a story, it was a really important thing to be a part of.”
Willem Dafoe
Yes, the great Willem Dafoe was involved in an unsimulated sex scene (kind of).
Dafoe appeared in Antichrist, a bizarre Lars Von Trier film that sees a couple horrified after their infant son falls out a window in a nearby room while they both have sex.
While Von Trier wanted the pair to have actual sex, he stated that he wasn’t able to use Dafoe in the scene due to his sizable penis, believing it would have been distracting.
Dafoe meanwhile simply said it was a bit more to do with himself and his scene partner Charlotte Gainsbourg both being married.
The solution came however, when body doubles were used for the unsimulated parts of the sex scene, cut together with a simulated sex scene Dafoe and Gainsbourg filmed.
Dafoe has been nominated for four Oscars but never won, with nominations for Best Supporting Actor for Platoon, Shadow of the Vampire, and The Florida Project, and Best Actor for At Eternity’s Gate.
From what Von Trier said about Dafoe though, I can’t imagine he'd be too sad.
Topics: Academy Awards, Celebrity, Film, Oscars, Sex and Relationships, TV and Film
Michael Slavin