Pic from Comics 2 Film
Lauren Lee Smith: Actra Toronto Vol 15 Issue 1 page 26 Winter 2006
The Skinny on Skin: the naked truth on sex scenes.
DH: So when you have to do a sexual scene with nudity, how do you prepare for it?
LL: Really the only thing that I did was build trust with Clement and Eric. And then rehearsing it over and over and over; getting the blocking down and making sure that we were comfortable within our boundaries. So that, when it comes to the day and the moment, you just sort of let it go and conquer your fears. Let all your insecurities and anxieties go away. I think that can only happen if you trust the person you’re working with.
DH: Do you find yourself thinking of technical things and the choreography, when you’re in the midst of it?
LL: Not so much. We spent about a week really going through the blocking so it was ingrained in our heads. When it came down to it, it was like, “Okay, well we know that. It’s the emotional part of it now.”
DH: Was this your first experience doing nudity on film?
LL: Yes, absolutely it was.
DH: So describe your feeling about that.
LL: Most of my anxieties were about a month before the film started. I thought that I would never do nudity. And then I finally let it go. About a month before filming I thought, “I’ve committed to do this, I really want to do this. It scares the shit out of me.” As an actor, you kind of have to get naked, not necessarily physically, but mentally and emotionally. Once I came to peace with that it was fine. And it was actually, the very first day, sort of freeing.
DH: Describe some of the sex scenes in the film that you had to do.
LL: In the film there’s not a whole lot of dialogue. The sex scenes had to convince the audience of what Leila and David were going through, in their heads and emotionally. So each sex scene was treated like it was a dialogue driven scene without the dialogue. It was very intense. It’s very easy to go through the motions of having sex, but it’s a lot harder to portray making love emotionally to someone on screen.
DH: What would be your advice to a young actress who has to do a sex scene in a film? What would you tell her?
LL: Don’t do it – unless you absolutely know that you can, that you want to, and that you completely trust the people that you’re working with. And then just let it go. Don’t think about your guts or your stomach, or whatever you don’t like about your body, just get over all the insecurities.
© Actra Toronto
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