Intimacy Between Actors
A lot of new or inexperienced actors have said they find sex scenes mess with their head.
You might be working with someone you barely know and suddenly you find yourself naked with them and kissing passionately. Or because good acting can release a lot of emotion, you might suddenly find yourself aroused when the other actor comes onto you in the scene and wonder whether you are turned on by the character or the action… and then when you see them off-set those feelings still linger.
But what all good actors say (and most try to do) is keep work and personal separate.
Off-screen romances between actors do happen but if you can avoid them, then do so. It is almost always bad for the film if two actors get together off-screen and then, even worse, split up before filming is over.
“I was working on a TV series with a well known actress in the early 2000s. We were playing a young married couple trying for a baby. We hit it off right from the beginning and very soon into shooting we started having an affair. It made some of our initial scenes incredibly sexy and powerful and they looked really great. But the problem was that she was married. One day her husband found out and suddenly everything collapsed. She decided to finish our affair and try and work things out with her husband. We broke up badly and there was a lot of tension between us which obviously transferred onto set. For four more agonising and painful weeks we had to work together, appearing on screen as though we were in love and even having bedroom scenes together, where off set we were barely speaking. It was probably the worst shoot of my life and I’m ashamed to say the series did suffer because of it. I promised myself I would never do anything like that again.” enCAST actor DB.
But as we all know, it’s sometimes very difficult to keep emotionally neutral. However, if it is at all possible, keep your personal feelings off the set and do what you can to avoid any kind of physical intimacy with another actor outside the script.
Of course when you are shooting the scene itself, you need the emotion. You must try, however, to keep the emotions for your character and not yourself. So even if you would like to see more happening, when the director calls, Cut! you should walk away from the scene and try to forget it and don’t be tempted to feel that what you felt from your acting partner in the scene is transferred over to real life.
For one thing they might not have felt the same way as you; for another, it’s bad for business!
