Judging by how many actors have spoken about shooting sex scenes, it’s fair to say they can be far more intense than most viewers realise.
For most people, miming intimacy with a colleague while a full crew watches would almost certainly trigger an HR nightmare. In film and TV, though, it’s simply part of the job — even for stars such as Sienna Miller and Ben Affleck.
The pair appeared together in Live By Night, with Miller playing Emma Gould and Affleck taking on gangster Joe Coughlin, while also directing the movie.
The cast also included Zoe Saldana, Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson and Chris Messina. Despite the line-up, the film sits at a lukewarm 35 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
In interviews ahead of the release, Miller spoke to E! News about filming the more explicit moments with Affleck — and admitted the experience could leave her overwhelmed, sometimes even “in tears”.
“Ben and I are like brother and sister, thank God, so there was no awkwardness,” she said of their more intimate scenes. “There was just a lot of stupid giggling. He’s very professional—I am not, but he is. In that environment, it was a cool scene.”
Miller also described how the script called for a string of love scenes across multiple locations, recalling: “There was a montage in the script saying we did it everywhere: in the car, in the bar… I was like, ‘That’s an entire day of just love scenes! OK. How do we do this?’
As the day dragged on, she said the sheer repetition took a toll: “Obviously, by the time nine hours of it has gone past, I was shaking with tears running down my face. I mean, I can’t tell you— but you have to laugh. Ben is just professional. It is what it is.”
She also claimed there came a moment when Affleck asked the director of photography to “keep rolling” while the scene kept going, turning the shoot into what she jokingly framed as a kind of on-screen marathon.
“I was like, ‘OK, obviously Joe Coughlin is a real performer’,” Miller quipped. “This happened three times, and by the third I [finally said], ‘Are you joking?'”
She added that she could barely keep it together during takes: “There will be some outtakes from that [scene] where I have to walk out of the room because I just have tears running down my face.”
Whether the production used an intimacy coordinator hasn’t been confirmed, but it’s increasingly common for sets to bring one in to choreograph and manage these sequences.
Intimacy coordinator Brooke M. Haney has previously explained what typically happens if an actor becomes physically aroused during a scene.
“Here’s the thing — this isn’t actually very common,” she told US Weekly in 2024. “We’re at work, right? With the lights bearing down, microphones, a couple of cameras in your face, director, DP [director of photography] and other necessary crew watching on monitors, it’s just not that sexy.”
It’s hard to argue with that.