British actress, Keira Knightley has ruled out sex scenes in movies directed by men, saying she feels “uncomfortable trying to portray the male gaze.”
Speaking with American filmmaker, Lulu Wang and writer-producer Diane Solway on the Chanel Connects podcast, Knightley explained that her decision to not play in sex scenes directed by men stemmed from her own vanity also.
“It’s partly vanity and also it’s the male gaze.
“I don’t want it to be those horrible sex scenes where you’re all greased up and everybody is grunting. I’m not interested in doing that.
“Saying that, there’s times where I go, ‘Yeah, I completely see where this sex would be really good in this film and you basically just need somebody to look hot’, so therefore you can use somebody else.
“Because I’m too vain, and the body has had two children now, and I’d just rather not stand in front of a group of men naked,” the 35-year-old explained.
During the interview, Knightley expressed satisfaction that she would want to work with a female director if a film focused on female life experiences.
She further stated: “If I was making a story that was about that journey of motherhood and body [acceptance], I feel like, I’m sorry, but that would have to be with a female film-maker.
“If it was about motherhood, about how extraordinary that body is, about how suddenly you’re looking at this body that you’ve got to know and is your own and it’s seen in a completely different way and it’s changed in ways which are unfathomable to you before you become a mother, then yeah, I would totally be up for exploring that with a woman who would understand that.”
The topic of how actors are treated while filming sex scenes has been brought to the fore in recent times, particularly since the MeToo movement.
In order to make actors comfortable while on movie sets, studios now hire intimacy coordinators to oversee sex scenes and ensure actors are treated respectfully during shooting.