When it comes to Hollywood sex scenes, we all have a morbid curiosity about how real they are.
There is no other job in the world where, a few days a year, you have to pretend to be sh*gging someone else.
In some cases, the actor’s partner may even be on set - take The Terminator where James Cameron directed his future wife Linda Hamilton in a racy sex scene.
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Every now and then though, a new film will pop up with the teasing promise – ‘this actually happened’.
Whether it be The Brown Bunny, where a director received an actual blowjob from the star in the film, or films like Strangers By the Lake – where the cast was warned they would be naked 90% of the time.
When it comes to those films though, where unsimulated sex scenes actually happen, there is one thing that many simply don’t realise.
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We found this out when LADBible spoke exclusively to Hollywood intimacy co-ordinator Brooke Haney, and asked them about unsimulated sex scenes.
When we asked them how they would approach scenes like this as an intimacy co-ordinator – their response was shocking.
They said: “So in the States, you can't, under SAG-AFTRA rules. That's literally the difference in a film that's under SAG-AFTRA or porn.
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“That's just the delineation. Legally everything that is film or TV under SAG-AFTRA has to be simulated.”
When asked how films are able to pull this off then, they said: “It was filmed outside the US, or assault was happening. Or rules were being broken. I know that it’s happened.”
Shockingly, the rules are so strict, that any sexual act simply can’t be filmed in the US.
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They said: “I worked on a project where there was peeing. Because the project was so sexual in nature, even for that, the actor was like, ‘I think I could just pee’, and I was like, ‘Nope, we're gonna use a pee rig’.”
Whilst shocking, this does explain the lengths that films will sometimes go to in order to portray ‘real sex’ whilst staying within the lines.
In the case of Nymphomanic, a film by Lars Von Trier starring Shia LeBeouf, Uma Thurman, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, they went to extreme lengths.
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Wanting to depict hardcore sex, but unable to have the characters engage in it for real – they hired body doubles to have sex, before CGI’ing the actor’s top halves on.
If it means directors who want to go all the way can manage it without putting actors through an uncomfortably odd experience – we’ll take it.
Brooke's new book The Intimacy Co-ordinator's guidebook is available for purchase now
Topics: TV and Film, Film, Sex and Relationships
Michael Slavin