Sex scenes.
[Locked to Est members]

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.