Some completely missed the mark
Anne Hathaway's film 'Love & Other Drugs' features several intense love scenes. The star explained that one time, she got a little ahead of herself on set. Discussing one scene she said, “I have to remove my trench coat and be without clothes underneath, and I thought we were filming, but it turned out we were just rehearsing and I got unnecessarily unclothed in front of a lot of people!”
In an interview Reynolds explained, “So in the scene she’s sitting there, and I take her top off, I take her bra off, and she has those pasties on, but she’s drawn these adorable little smiley faces on them. And I forget every line in the scene. Not just from this movie, from every movie I’ve done,” Reynolds said.
On the set of 'Life During Wartime' famed actress Allison Janney and her costar Michael Lerner got into a slippery situation. “We had to have (...) up against a wall and they started spraying us with glistening stuff to make us look sweaty, but no one seemed to realize that we were standing on a marble floor,” she said in an interview. “They said action and he … pulled me up against the wall and his feet slipped out from under him and he went crashing down on the floor. It was terrible, but it was one of those moments I’ll never forget.”
Zac Efron got the chance to film a spicy scene with his childhood crush Heather Graham. Rather than keeping it cool, Efron revealed he was completely nervous and shaking!
Everyone who has seen the hit TV show 'Shameless' knows just how often Emmy Rossum has to film love scenes. The star said, “We like it to be realistic but not real, but I wear something I call 'pad'… it’s kind of a little triangular panty liner that you stick to you,” she said in a very frank interview.
This iconic film starring then-celebrity couple Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise was originally meant to be much different. Director Stanley Kubrick intended the male role to go to Woody Allen or Steve Martin. However, the passion-filled film was clearly meant for stars with real-life spark!
If you think Robert Pattinson is hot, this story will definitely affirm it! When filming 'Maps to the Stars' with Julianne Moore, Pattinson revealed things got uncomfortably heated!
“I sweat like a crazy person,” he said in an interview. “I was trying to literally catch drops of sweat to stop them hitting her back! Afterwards she was like ‘Are you having a panic attack?’ It was so embarrassing.”
When you think of Marilyn Monroe, you probably remember her in a flowing white gown from the film 'The Seven Year Itch.' Turns out, that iconic scene has a dark backstory. Monroe was forced to film the 15-take shoot in front of over 5,000 New Yorkers who were howling at her.
Reese Witherspoon opened up about her experience filming the 1996 psychological thriller 'Fear,' directed by James Foley. Witherspoon wasn't even 20 years old when they started filming, and had asked for a stunt double to do her intimate scenes with co-star Mark Wahlberg, but her boundaries were not prioritized. "I didn't have control over it," she told Harper's Bazaar. "It wasn't explicit in the script that that's what was going to happen," she said, referring to a scene where they get intimate on a rollercoaster and the camera focuses on her face as she climaxes. "So that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it, and I said no." However, Witherspoon ended up having to do the scene. "It wasn't a particularly great experience." While she says it didn't leave her traumatized, it was certainly a formative experience that has inspired her to advocate for change.
If anyone can find the humor in something awkward, it's Kristen Bell. The star filmed a love scene with Adam Brody while she was seven months pregnant. Brody said they "sandwiched" her baby in between their stomachs.
Salma Hayek’s breakout film ‘Desperado’ (1995), directed by Robert Rodriguez and co-starring Antonio Banderas, launched her career in many ways, but she has revealed it was also a traumatic experience for her.
In 2021, the actress appeared on podcast ‘Armchair Expert’ and emphasized that Rodriguez and Banderas “never put pressure on [her],” but nonetheless revealed that the love scene was a surprise to her, as it was not in the script. Hayek said the scene was brought to her attention after production began, but she agreed to do it on a closed set.
“When we were going to start shooting, I started to s o b,” Hayek said, explaining that she was afraid of Banderas, though he was "an absolute gentleman," because "he was very free. It scared me that for him it was like nothing."
"I was not letting go of the towel," Hayek said. "They would try to make me laugh. I would take it off for two seconds and start crying again. But we got through it." She added that part of her difficulty was that she kept thinking about her father and brother watching the film later.
In the case of Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson's on-screen intimacy in the 2011 film 'We Bought a Zoo,' there wasn't anything particularly notable, except Damon described their kiss as "hell." Appearing in LADBible TV's 'Agree to Disagree' with 'Oppenheimer' co-star Emily Blunt, the actors were discussing whether they agree or disagree that you have to tell someone when they have bad breath. They both agreed that it was right to tell the person, though subtly, before a producer brought up the topic of bad breath in intimate scenes.
"I had to kiss Scarlett [Johansson]—had to kiss. Can you imagine how horrible that was for me?—but we did," Damon launched into his story, earning a jokingly hard time from Blunt about how bad it must have been to kiss Johansson's soft lips. "It was hell, ok?" Damon laughed and continued. "What happened was we did a shot before lunch and it was like this nice little two-shot that ended in the kiss. And it was really good. And we went to lunch and she and I both thought it was over."
That's where things took a turn. "She ate like an onion sandwich for lunch," Damon said. "And she came in and [We Bought a Zoo director] Cameron Crowe had set the camera up and it was like a tight shot of the kiss. And she goes, 'Oh [ ].' She goes, 'I literally just had I had like an onion sandwich. I thought we did this.'" He said he made fun of her breath and they just got it over with. He did ultimately clarify however, that usually, without the onion sandwiches, "her breath smells like roses."
Movies and TV have a way of making intimacy and relationships seem glamorous at every angle. From passionate kisses in the rain to steamy love under the sheets, watching those scenes can surely make you wonder what really happened on set. Most of the time, it's not what you'd think. Many actors have opened up about just how uncomfortable these moments are, and sometimes, they're barely consensual.
So here it is, the awkward, the ugly, and the hilarious. Check out these real stories from Hollywood spicy scenes.
Behind the scenes of famous film and TV love scenes
The awkward truth behind some iconic scenes
MOVIES Film
Movies and TV have a way of making intimacy and relationships seem glamorous at every angle. From passionate kisses in the rain to steamy love under the sheets, watching those scenes can surely make you wonder what really happened on set. Most of the time, it's not what you'd think. Many actors have opened up about just how uncomfortable these moments are, and sometimes, they're barely consensual.
So here it is, the awkward, the ugly, and the hilarious. Check out these real stories from Hollywood spicy scenes.