Shooting a film with real, unsimulated, sex scenes in it would be a daunting task for even the most experienced actor, but for some of the stars on the set of 2013's Nymphomaniac, what they had to do was downright 'humiliating'.
The 2013 two-part erotic film series shot by the highly-regarded Danish directer Lars Von Trier contains a number of controversial sexual scenes, showing its star-studded cast in full nudity and even engaging in sexual acts with each other.
Nymphomaniac Part 1 and 2 have achieved something of a cult status as a result, though fans of the films often advise others to 'watch it alone' due to the constant nudity and sex scenes throughout.
And these films have some big names in them, including: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe, Jean-Marc Barr, Connie Nielsen, and Mia Goth - but for some of them the project was quite degrading.
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The actor behind the titular nymphomaniac, Charlotte Gainsbourg, told Vanity Fair in 2014 about the difficulties of stripping off on set and acting out sexual behavior. Gainsbourg revealed: "I think, just in regards to the sexual things, the fellatio was hardest."
She explained that this was because 'it’s very intimate, and there was something quite humiliating about the whole thing.'
Gainsbourg clarified that it was 'not on a real d*ck' that she was filmed fellating, with Von Trier hiring porn stars to work as body doubles for the full-on sex scenes throughout the films.
Other actors from Nymphomaniac have spoken about the difficulties they had on set though, surprisingly, many believed that the female actors had it easier.
Stellan Skarsgård, one of the director's closest collaborators, told the publication that 'the actresses usually love to work with [Von Trier],' due to the quality of their characters.
However, it was when Gainsbourg had to shoot some promos for the film that she was really pushed out of her comfort zone.
The actor shared how she had to do a photoshoot for the movie posters, which bared the caption 'show us your "O" face', but she hated every minute as she felt safe acting sexually around the director, but not others.
"The photographer was very sweet," she said, "but he wasn’t Lars, and to go that far, just pretending an orgasm, without Lars, was suddenly awkward."
But the hardest part for the films' leads, Skarsgard and Gainsbourg, wasn't even the constant stripping off or having to fake orgasms for random photographers, it was actually the demanding script.
Skarsgård explained how the director often wrote better roles for women, but he had been told that this time would be different. “He promised me that this one would be the best male role he’s ever written. And I said to him, ‘Well, that doesn’t mean much, you know,’” he revealed, adding that when he got his lines, the role might have been too well-written.
“Me and Charlotte had about 90 pages of text,” Skarsgård said. “It’s so much dialogue, it was really hard.”
Topics: Sex and Relationships
William Morgan