Actors you never realised actually ‘had sex on screen’ featured in list of movies

Some celebs are required to get down and dirty while filming

Some Hollywood A-listers have been required to get it on for real during filming.

It’s rare that you come across a modern rom-com that doesn’t have a few raunchy scenes littered throughout.

Take The Holiday with Jude Law and Cameron Diaz as an example. But despite looking realistic, a lot of the intimate moments are as a result of very clever camera work.

However, there is another world in which actors are required to get intimate for real, and several celebs have been open about their experiences. So, without further ado…

Robert Pattinson in Little Ashes

Pattinson said his orgasm face was ‘recorded for eternity’ in Little Ashes (PT Films)

While he’s best known for his roles in Twilight and Batman, Pattison has also played numerous edgy roles throughout his career.

One particular scene in in 2008’s Little Ashes has Pattinson pleasuring himself for real on camera as he believed that faking such things ‘doesn’t work’ as far as authenticity goes.

Speaking to Interview magazine in Germany, he told them: “My orgasm face is recorded for eternity.”

Aubrey Plaza in The To-Do List

Plaza in 2013’s The To-Do List (CBS Films)

During an interview with Conan, the Recreation star revealed that her role as Brandy in 2013’s The To-Do List involved masturbating on camera.

“In my head I envisioned a nice scene where you just see my hand slowly go out of frame,” Plaza said of shooting the scene.

But it turns out that assumption was way off the mark.

“I thought I was doing one thing and when I showed up it was a whole different thing, it was a full body shot and I asked the director ‘what should I do’ and she said ‘masturbate like it says in the script’.” Eeeek!

Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg (body doubles) in Antichrist

Antichrist featured unsimulated sex (PT Films/CBS Films)

If you’ve seen the 2009 movie, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you actually saw leading actors Dafoe and Gainsbourg having sex.

Indeed, unsimulated sex does happen in the film, but the bits you can’t fake were actually performed by body doubles.

According to director Lars von Trier, Dafoe was ‘too well endowed’ – which he believed would leave audiences ‘confused’. However, this question was later put to Dafoe himself where he revealed the real reason they had doubles for the unsimulated sex scenes was that ‘Charlotte and I are both married and I’m not sure everybody would be cool with that’.

Chloë Sevigny and Vincent Gallo in The Brown Bunny

Chloë Sevigny and Vincent Gallo performed in unsimulated sex scenes (Wellspring)

2003’s erotic drama The Brown Bunny proved to be highly controversial as it included a scene where Sevigny performs unsimulated oral sex on Gallo – a move which was received negatively at the time.

In a 2011 interview with Playboy, she noted that the scene was ‘very complicated’.

She said: “There are a lot of emotions. I’ll probably have to go to therapy at some point. But I love Vincent. The film is tragic and beautiful, and I’m proud of it and my performance.

“I’m sad that people think one way of the movie, but what can you do? I’ve done many explicit sex scenes, but I’m not that interested in doing any more. I’m more self-aware now and wouldn’t be able to be as free, so why even do it?”

Kieran O’Brien and Margo Stilley 9 Songs

9 Songs is considered one of the most sexually explicit films around (Revolution Films)

2004’s 9 Songs is branded one of the most sexually explicit films of all time – as it sees actors Kieran O’Brien and Margo Stilley engage in multiple sex scenes.

Reflecting on the movie 20 years later, Stilley told LADbible that she stands by the film to this day, despite facing heavy backlash over the years.

“It’s a shame that it’s been torn apart into these little pieces and bastardised online, to be honest,” she said.

Lauren Lee Smith in Lie with Me

Lauren Lee Smith and Eric Balfour in Lie with Me (FilmFlex)

Her first reaction when her agent told her that her part in erotic 2005 drama Lie with Me would require not just nudity, but also live sex on camera, was to ask: “Are you kidding?”

As part of her audition she had a chemistry test with co-star Eric Balfour, and ‘there was apparently chemistry’.

Kerry Fox and Mark Rylance in Intimacy

Rylance would later express regrets over the film (Studio Canal)

The 2001 film took it’s title quite literally.

There was an unsimulated oral sex act in the movie, and Rylance said the film was the ‘most difficult job’ he took in large part due to that scene.

“Hanif Kureishi’s writing couldn’t have been more intimate and revealing, but I found the making of the film and the subsequent publicity and personal attacks very, very painful. I wish I hadn’t made it.”

Nymphomaniac (body doubles)

The main stars of Nymphomaniac used body doubles for the sex scenes (Nordisk Film)

Producer of Nymphomaniac Louise Vesth, explained to The Hollywood Reporter that body doubles were used for the sex scenes in the movie, and then digitally imposed that over the actors.

“We shot the actors pretending to have sex and then had the body doubles, who really did have sex, and in post (production) we will digital-impose the two,” she explained.

“So above the waist it will be the star and then below the waist it will be the doubles.”