Featured Image Credit: Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty Images
Topics: Hollywood, Disney, Selena Gomez, Film and TV
William Morgan
Topics: Hollywood, Disney, Selena Gomez, Film and TV
Stripping off your clothes in front of a set of cinematic 4K cameras, as well as every member of the film crew from the director to the interns, has to be one of the most nerve-racking parts of being an actor.
So it should be unsurprising that many of the more successful stars of Hollywood outright refuse to shoot any sex scenes at all when they are working on a project, requiring body doubles and stunt performers if the scripts gets too hot and heavy.
This is especially true for High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, who leapt into the adult acting world with the 2012 bikinis and bullets flick Spring Breakers, which she starred in alongside Rachel Korine, Ashley Benson, and Selena Gomez.
While this film is considered a cult classic, with Britney Spears bangers intermixing with Skrillex as four scantily clad young women fall deep into a world of crime to fund a life of hedonism, Hudgens' experience filming a raunchy threesome caused her to swear off sex scenes for the rest of her career.
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In Spring Breakers, the former Disney Channel star strips off for a menage a trois with James Franco's gangster character Alien, and Benson, who plays her on-screen best friend Brit.
However, despite their relative experience on screen, both Benson and Hudgens were not sure about taking their clothes off for such an intimate scene.
"We were like, 'This is gonna be fine, right?'" Hudgens shared with Kimmel in 2013, a year after the film's release and surprise success.
"We were giving ourselves so much anxiety that we were so much more nervous by the time we actually got to set," Hudgens added. "It was just bad."
In 2014, she was, if anything, even more vehement, saying of the scene on SiriusXM's Sway in the Morning: "It was the most awkward situation to ever possibly ever ever ever be in."
Later in the interview, when she was asked 'if you could erase one sexual experience from your memory', what would it be, she responded: "Does the James Franco situation count?"
Benson, for her part, told Hollywood Life in 2013: "I’m really happy I had Vanessa to be there with me and James, he’s done this a million times, he didn’t make it awkward at all. We were very comfortable.
"Vanessa and I were so thankful that we were so close and had each other because any intimate scene is very awkward, even kissing a guy on screen is awkward because you have people all around you filming as well as an audience so I don’t know, it turned out amazing."
But Hudgens, now 37, told Glow magazine at the time of the film's release in 2012: "It was very nerve-racking for me. I told my agent that I never want to do it ever again."
She explained to the publication that she had wanted to take on the R-rated project so that she could do what every Disney child star attempts to do upon turning 18, escape that squeaky clean image created by the house of mouse.
Hudgens said: "I'm really proud of the movie. I feel like it's a breed of its own, it's a movie unlike any other and it's very fresh and fun and exciting. I feel like it's a great take on our youth culture right now."
She added: "For a while I was kind of struggling and fighting for these roles that I just desperately wanted. It was hard and it was a struggle, but then again life is always a struggle.
"Having a career will always be a struggle. You'll always have to fight for what you want. Definitely crossing over and being able to tackle these grittier parts was a challenge, but I feel like I've done it!"
Reflecting on the role with The Hollywood Reporter in 2024, Selena Gomez shared a conversation she had with Hudgens about their naivety, saying: "I remember I thought I was so mature. I’m sure I sounded like I was 12.
"I was like, 'Well, technically the movie is rated R, so [my young fans] are not allowed to see it, so they won’t see it.' And Vanessa’s like, 'Ohh-kay...' I was so naive."