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Sex scenes.
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Question for actors - what kind of rules do you have about doing sex scenes? How do you feel about them?

I ask because I just came across an article about sex scenes with quotes from two women I worked with on The Tudors - now, me and Natalie had talked quite a bit about it and we both agreed it was definitely not the easiest bit of work - she asked for a closed set, got it, and was fine - but we all went out afterwards and talked about how weird it was to pretend to fuck with a dozen people standing around making sure there isn't too much glare off your arse and that your elbow is in the right place. So that wasn't much of a big deal.

But Ruta's quote -
"I was absolutely terrified and had no idea what was going on," she recalls. "I cried afterwards because I was thinking, 'This isn't acting, what am I doing? My mum's going to see this.' But now I'm very strict on what I do – I have to know that a sex scene is going to give the audience information about your character or a relationship. If it doesn't do either of those, I won't do it."

I knew she was a bit nervous, but I had no idea how badly she felt about it. And I feel like shit about that because we really did go for it - so I get what she means with "not acting" because yeah, there was a lot going on. I'd said OK, we have this in the script, and this, so how do you feel about doing this, and she said she was all for it. And she seemed fine afterwards. I didn't know - and I still don't know if it's a case of her not being OK when she'd sat down and thought about it (and realised her mam would see it) or if she wasn't OK at the time and I missed it because she was acting.

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v_hazardous
2012-04-22 10:26 am UTC (link)

Do you remember your first public scene? Obviously I'm not an actor, but Ruta's comments read to me as being similar to when I first began scening in public. There's a shitload of determination going in - you want to be there, you want to be doing this, for whatever personal reasons - and that, plus everything else that's going on, can obscure the fear. And then you get to the end and the spell breaks; you realise what's just happened and reaction sets in.

I suspect she was lying to herself some about how fine she was with doing the sex scene in the first place, partly because it was an unknown - you really can't be sure how you'll react to something like that until you actually do it.

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j_rhys_meyers
2012-04-22 10:32 am UTC (link)

Honestly I don't, because I was probably drunk at the time. But that makes sense, yeah.

I just don't like the idea she was pushed into something she wasn't OK with and that I was part of that - if I'd thought at the time she wasn't OK then I would have done things differently. I did have a film scene when I was younger where I was an arsehole about it - M/M/F threesome, the other guy was twitchy and I teased him about it, but... I was 20, he was 36 and a much more experienced actor. Which isn't an excuse (and I apologised to him later when we worked together again) but very different to here - I was 29 at the time, she was 24, and I feel like I should have known better.

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v_hazardous
2012-04-22 10:58 am UTC (link)

I think you're being too hard on yourself, honey. Ruta herself didn't know better and told you the truth as she understood it, that what you two had talked about doing was perfectly fine.

Where it was her first time... well, perhaps callous of me, but most first times for women that have anything whatsoever to do with sex kind of suck and you just have to get through it, evaluate it, and learn from it. Which she's obviously done, and now she has specific standards and criteria for how to approach sex scenes in her work.

It's sort of like making music videos was for me. I've never been so uncomfortable in my life as when we were doing Absolutely Everybody (and I still hate it, lol) and that was pretty tame, comparatively. But it was a necessary experience for me to figure out where my boundaries were and what worked for me. And now I'm a lot happier about doing them because I understand the whole process better and that gives me more control over how my body is used or presented in them.

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j_rhys_meyers
2012-04-22 11:06 am UTC (link)

That does all make sense, yeah. And I appreciate the reassurance - it's just one of those things where I'm looking back and thinking "Did I fuck up? Should I have noticed something or done something different?" but I think you're right, it seems like it was a case of her not knowing until after, so.

I'm coming at this from a funny angle because I started out with very few boundaries and not really being aware I needed them - so I was comfortable with more than I probably should have been. So it does take imagination to put myself in the shoes of someone who is genuinely uncomfortable with it in the unhappy sense, rather than just because it's awkward, and I wasn't sure how much I was missing/misunderstanding.

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	v_hazardous 2012-04-22 11:16 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, that makes it more difficult for you to be able to figure out the source of the discomfort. Really, though, I think you were just part of a learning experience for her, one that most actresses have to go through at some point in their career. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

j_rhys_meyers
2012-04-22 11:21 am UTC (link)

What's also a bit weird - and you asking about my first public scene just made me think of it - my first proper sex scene (as in one where you actually saw anything going on rather than fade to black) was with the woman I was dating at the time. So that does throw things off, that was different enough that there was some focus on that rather than the general weirdness of sex scenes.

And - same film - we had a drunk orgy scene, and the champagne was real to get everyone loosened up first. So we weren't going into it cold which again, changes things.

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