Jake Gyllenhaal says sex scenes with Jennifer Aniston were ‘torture’

Jennifer Aniston might be regarded as one of the world's most beautiful women, but Jake Gyllenhaal was not a fan of filming sex scenes with the star.

Gyllenhaal made the revelation while looking back on the now-two-decades-old film The Good Girl (2002), which saw him step into the shoes of his character Thomas 'Holden' Worther who has an affair with Aniston's character, Justine Last.

He explained that he absolutely hated filming the scenes because there was a whole cast and crew present - the exact opposite of what most of us are used to when getting intimate.

The actor said in an appearance on The Howard Stern Show: "[Filming the sex scene] was torture, yes it was. But it was also not torture. I mean, come on, it was like a mix of both.

"Weirdly, love scenes are awkward, because there are maybe 30, 50 people watching it? Maybe if you have a closed set, it's less? That doesn’t turn me on."

He said the process of getting intimate on camera was 'oddly mechanical', adding: "It's a dance, you're choreographing for a camera. You can get in it, but it's like a fight scene, you have to choreograph those scenes."

Needless to say, while the pair are actors, they are not pornographic actors and used what's known as the 'pillow technique' to keep a degree of distance between them as they pretended to have sex.

"The pillow technique was used," Gyllenhaal revealed. "That was just pre-emptive and used generally always when actually in a horizontal place in that movie.

"I think that was actually a Jennifer suggestion. She was very kind to suggest it before we began. She was like, 'I'm putting a pillow here'."

As you can imagine, viewers of the interview had a lot to say about the revelation.

One praised the interview, which was conducted from Gyllenhaal's home in October 2021: "I love how honest actors have become when they answer from home and have podcasts now. Before they would give the most generic answer."

A second couldn't help but joke: "If I was Jen I would not opt for the pillow hahaha [sic]."

"At first, I would've needed the pillow. I wouldn't have needed the pillow after she demanded it," speculated a third while a fourth wrote: "I wonder where that pillow is today..."

"The Good Girl was a great movie," remarked a fifth. "They had great chemistry together."