18 Celeb Sex Scene Secrets Revealed

Celebrities Dish On Their Famous Sex Scenes

You ever want to know how sex scenes really work? Well look no further than these celebrities who gave their experiences to Cosmo. You think it’s all glamour and bodies touching? Think again.

“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.” — Lena Dunham, on “Girls”

“We shot the beginning of our relationship first, and it was fun and alive. Then we did the sex scenes and it was … toxic. Ryan and I had stopped relating to each other as Ryan and Michelle. Those scenes took forever. I had a long drive from set to home each night, and I would roll down all the windows and turn up the music as loud as I could and hang my head out the window like a dog and scream. It was my escape.” — Michelle Williams, on sex scenes with Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine

“You mean the trying-not-to-have-sex sex scene? It was hard … a lot of times actors can trick people into thinking something is happening when it’s not happening, and we had to call ourselves out on anything that didn’t feel honest. Actors become very professional and proficient about watching out for each other’s light and not stepping on each other’s lines. All of these things are artificial, and you have to strip that away if you’re going to achieve a sense of intimacy. In real life sex is messy, and we wanted to get at that wonderful messiness.” — Ryan Gosling, on Blue Valentine

“It’s actually kind of annoying, you’re there for 12 hours, it’s exhausting.” — Justin Timberlake

“You kind of suddenly feel this strange thing of asking people to participate in anything like that because they’re not a real couple. You find out how strange this is to ask anybody to get naked together and put a camera on them. [The actors] actually made me more comfortable. I was being a lot more prudish. I would have allowed them to be more prudish and they told me it was all right and important for the story. They wanted to do what they wanted to do and they were comfortable.” — Angelina Jolie, on directing a sex scene for In the Land of Blood and Honey

“It’s like running in the rain. There’s a certain point when you go, ‘[Expletive] it, I’m already wet. I’m not going to get any less wet, so I might as well just enjoy how this feels.’ I mean, sure, there’s awkwardness about being in a weird flesh-colored thong, bouncing on top of an actress. I am not a small human being. I weigh at least 200 pounds and I’m six-foot-two. And Wiig is a twig; she’s a skinny little thing. It’s weird and uncomfortable at first, but then all the awkwardness melts away and you think, All right, we’re doing this, so let’s have fun with it. You know what I mean? You’re in that moment and it’s happening and it’s not going to get any better, so you might as well enjoy it.” — Jon Hamm, on Bridesmaids

“Maybe it should be weird, simulating sex with your husband in front of people? But it’s really not. When it’s a love scene with someone you actually love, there’s no feeling like, ‘Can I touch him here? Can I touch him there?’ You know what your boundaries are — or what they aren’t, I suppose.” — Anna Paquin, on “True Blood”

“It’s just a part of the role. So I did it. I mean, you see everything.” — Cameron Diaz

“I think the more comfortable you are with each other, the harder it gets to do any kind of really intense relationship scene. You’re kind of thinking, ‘I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of this person.'” — Robert Pattinson, on Breaking Dawn

“It’s hard to have a sex scene, period. It doesn’t matter if it’s a friend, a male, a female. You’re with 100-something crew members, lighting you, repositioning you, there’s no comfort whatsoever.” — Mila Kunis, on Black Swan

“There’s some good positions in there. Jon Hamm — pumpin’ away. He was making his money that day. There was nothing hot about that scene. We weren’t, like, looking into each other’s eyes.” — Kristen Wiig, on Bridesmaids

“I was nervous because I’ve been in love with her since I can remember. It was very surreal for me.” — Zac Efron, on his sex scene with Heather Graham in At Any Price

“I’m pretty immature, so I get pretty embarrassed still. But yeah, you … I would, like, check out once in a while, certain shots to make sure I felt OK. Because sometimes once you see it, like, there was one of the panties coming off that we did, and after I watched it I was like, Oh that’s not bad, because it was really quick. It wasn’t like, lingering on anything that I felt, you know, modest about or anything. I checked a little. You do sort of go the opposite direction between takes. ‘Oh, what are you doing this weekend?’ Like, totally benign conversation between to make it a little normal.” — Natalie Portman, on No Strings Attached

“I just start by apologizing … I think somebody told me, and I’m not sure who the actor was. I think it was Sir Laurence Olivier who said it, but … I always use Sir Laurence. When in doubt, use Sir Laurence Olivier. I think he said something to the effect of, “I apologize if I get aroused and I apologize if I do not get aroused.” And you have to say it with the accent if you do it. But there is sort of always this awkward state of, is this OK, is that OK? And then in between it’s like, just, let’s act like nothing happened. And then you see how good of an actor you really are.” — Ashton Kutcher, on No Strings Attached

“There is that revoltingly embarrassing moment when you have to take your clothes off in front of strangers. I mean, I don’t go to the beach in a bikini for a reason. So I thought,
OK, I’m going to be in control. I’m going to do everything properly, disrobe at the last minute, and in between shots get the clothes back on. But then I found that every time I put my robe back on, it rubbed all the body makeup off, and that added 20 minutes to filming. As with all things in life, the second you stop making it about you and you make it about everyone else, it just got, dare I say, fun.” — Anne Hathaway, on Love and Other Drugs

“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.” — Jake Gyllenhaal, on Love and Other Drugs

“It was very nerve-wracking for me. I told my agent I never want to ever do it again.” — Vanessa Hudgens, on Spring Breakers

“There is always a particularly large and hairy man holding a boom wearing a crop top. I don’t know if they’re like, ‘Ooh, sex scene, where’s my crop top because I need to hover above Olivia, make sure my hairy belly is somewhere in the vicinity of her face.’ People imagine it’s this really glamorous and sexy thing, but I always laugh because in reality there are 50 people in the room. You are stopping and starting. There is someone yelling, like, ‘Can you move your hand, can you just put your shoulder down, OK, good, more, more …'” — Olivia Wilde, on sex scenes in general

“It’s a pretty technical process. It’s built out of lots of little pieces. It’s not as if we’re over there just making out and someone’s shooting.” — Joseph Gordon-Levitt, on Don Jon

“It was all me, pal. All the flopping around, all the everything was all me. When you take on a character like this and you want to accurately reflect the nature of who these people are, you just gotta do it. You can’t think about yourself, because it’s not me, it’s a depiction of somebody else.” — Leonardo DiCaprio, on Wolf of Wall Street

“When I did ‘Flight,’ the first scene we shot, she [actress, Nadine Velazquez] was supposed to be naked,” Denzel said. “So I thought maybe we oughtta go out and have a bite to eat or something, say hello and get to know each other a little bit, before you gotta walk around with no clothes on all day,” the actor added.