17 of Hollywood's Hottest Get Brutally Honest About Sex Scenes

"There are rules. I have ethics, I'm not completely out of my mind. But I don't think there's anything wrong with sex. Sex is beautiful if it's done right. And I wouldn't just do it for no reason. . . . Sex is different than love, and there is a separation, and that middle gap is what the movie's about."

— On his unsimulated sex scenes in Nymphomaniac

"I wanted to have it as a line so much, 'I bit through all the pillows. Every. Single. One.' . . . By the way, that's what he should be ashamed of in the morning. All those beautiful pillows! Egyptian cotton! 'I ruined this bed!'"

— On his sex scene with Kristen Stewart in Breaking Dawn

"I will be lying there, kind of being slammed by a naked body, thinking, 'I want out of this bed. I want out of this scene. I want out of this life. Who did this to me?' And I realized, I'm my own boss. I've written it. I'm directing it. I'm the person holding myself in sexual slavery."

— On her sex scenes in Girls

"Sex scenes can be quite awkward. As a guy, the first thing you want to do is make sure you're not taking advantage. You don't want the girl to feel like you're getting a free feel or something. I try to make a fool of myself in one way or another to lighten the mood and then just go for it, because you don't want to be doing take after take."

— On his sex scenes with Mia Wasikowska in Jane Eyre

"There are two big sex scenes in the two [final] films, and we did them fairly early. It was so weird, it didn't even feel like we were doing a scene within a Twilight film. I was like, 'Bella! What are you doing? Wow! What is happening here?!' It was very surreal."

— On her sex scene with Robert Pattinson in Breaking Dawn

"[Lars von Trier] asked me if I would be okay taking turns in a sex scene with two shots — in one, instead of Willem Dafoe it was with a porn actor. Lars asked me if it would be okay to be in the same shot with him, and I didn't see why it would be a problem, so I said okay. And then it went on, and it was just becoming a porn film for me because Willem wasn't there anymore. I was in a different film, and it was strange. Then he asked me to do another shot, and that's when I said, 'No, I can't do it.'"

— On her unsimulated sex scene in Antichrist

"The sex felt real — it wasn't sexy or 'a sex scene,' and that's why we got into trouble. You shouldn't be penalized for doing a good job."

— On his controversial sex scenes with Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine

"Yes, yes. It was just [an] absurdity, a form of hilarity for all of us involved. We went to work that day and said, 'What time do we start being ridiculous? . . . Eight o'clock? Perfect.'"

— On her sex scene with ex Justin Timberlake in Bad Teacher

"I've had a pretty illustrious career at this point, but the hardest thing has been pretending to be turned on by Anne Hathaway. And I pride myself on really having pulled it off."

— On his sex scene with Anne Hathaway in Love and Other Drugs

"There was a box which he hit, so he was nowhere near me, thank God! I did actually say to Michael before one of the scenes — I was like, 'I've got a security guard outside. You touch me and he's gonna break your legs!' And he was like, 'Keira, you're tied to a bed. You're not really in a position to say that.' I said, 'I guess you're right.' . . . [I did] a couple of shots of vodka — definitely — beforehand, and then a couple of glasses of champagne as a celebration of never having to do that again!"

— On her spanking scene with Michael Fassbender in A Dangerous Method

"Rob possibly had the most hideous horrible cold of any co-star I've ever had to do a love scene with ever in my entire life. He was literally snorting and snotting through every second of it — and it was not appealing. I'm talking green, infectious, disgusting — I'm not kidding!"

— On her sex scene with Robert Pattinson in Water For Elephants

"[We] got to have very uncomfortable scenes for two weeks . . . I mean, regardless there's like 150 crew men watching and you see each other's bits and pieces. The whole thing is just wrong."

— On her sex scenes with Justin Timberlake in Friends With Benefits

"From his past films, [director Scott Hicks] is incredible with capturing the love in those scenes. Everyone builds those scenes up. There is sort of a fear inherent in everyone else so me and Taylor weren't afraid at all."

— On his sex scenes with Taylor Schilling in The Lucky One

"Sex scenes are great. A lot of my costars have been sexy guys my age, and so, why not? I'm not going to pretend it's not fun. Justin was great — he had come from doing Friends With Benefits, where he basically had sex every day at work — and so it was easy for both of us. We just kind of got it on, and then were like, 'That was good!'"

— On her sex scenes with Justin Timberlake in In Time

"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."

— On his sex scene with Olivia Wilde in The Change-Up

"It's only happened to me once, and it was very embarrassing. A girl had to be on top of me, she had spectacular breasts, and I hadn't rearranged my — stuff into a harmless position. She's basically rubbing herself all over me and, um, it got a bit hard. I had to apologize profusely afterward. It's not great when you're in a professional acting environment and somebody gets a boner, is it? No, not acceptable. You don't think of sex scenes as showing your bum to the nation. It's actually acutely uncomfortable being naked in a roomful of people. The very last thing it is is sexy. The actual physicality is very uncomfortable. All you're doing is smacking your nuts against someone, and nothing is going in."

— On his sex scenes in Showtime's The Tudors

"I got really, really drunk. But then that led to more anxiety when I got home because I was like, 'What have I done? I don't know.' And he was married. And it was going to be my first time kissing a married man, and guilt is the worst feeling in your stomach. And I knew it was my job, but I couldn't tell my stomach that. So I called my mom, and I was like, 'Will you just tell me it's OK?' It was just very vulnerable. And you don't know what's too much. You want to do it real, you want everything to be real, but then . . . That was the most vulnerable I've ever been."

— On how she prepared for her first-ever sex scene (with Chris Pratt)