Do actors get nervous when they have to do scenes with other actors that they are physically attracted to? If you’re Jake Gyllenhaal the answer is yes! In fact, if you were a 22-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal you probably would have been nervous filming with the hottest star in those years, Jen Aniston. When the two were cast in the movie “The Good Girl,” Aniston was at the peak of her powers. “Friends” was still the number one show on TV. Jake was an up-and-coming young actor who was tasked with doing love scenes with her. Things went pretty much how one could have expected.
Howard Stern Setting Him Up
Gyllenhaal was on the Howard Stern show this Tuesday. It was Stern who set Gyllenhaal up about his experience working with Aniston. Although Jake was a bit reluctant to share any type of juicy details at first he ultimately ended up even revealing some tricks of the trade. On how a lot of these erotic scenes are filmed for non-X-rated movies. At first when asked by Stern whether working with Jen was torture, Jake mentioned,
“Oh yeah, it was torture, yes it was,” he said, while then kind of backtracking to say “But it was also not torture. I mean, come on, it was like a mix of both.”
So Was It Hard or Not?
Gyllenhaal had actually been asked about his experience working with Jen Aniston years ago. From his answers back then, and even recently on Howard Stern it seems like Gyllenhaal doesn’t want to really say it openly. However, he rather enjoyed the experience of having to get up close and personal with Aniston. Even though everything was just a work project. Back in 2016 he told PEOPLE,
“I will say, I had a crush on her for years. And working with her was not easy,” Even in those days he walked back on his comments about the experience being hard. Then adding, “I was – um, yeah. That’s all I’m going to say. It was lovely. It wasn’t hard, that’s what I would say.”
Filming Love Scenes in Hollywood
Filming some of these scenes can be overly uncomfortable for the actors for sure. There are many things that make filming, “intimate scenes” the least intimate experience that a person can have. Gyllenhaal explained that there are a ton of film crew members on hand for these scenes. That literally doesn’t get him going. He told Stern,
“Weirdly, love scenes are awkward, because there are maybe 30, 50 people watching it? That doesn’t turn me on,” Gyllenhaal went on to explain more of how these scenes were made saying, “It’s oddly mechanical. And also 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.”
Revealing Some Tricks Of The Trade
Gyllenhaal then revealed some of the tricks of the trade that actors use to film these types of scenes. He mentioned that for those particular scenes the “pillow technique” was used. It was actually Aniston’s idea to use that particular technique. Basically what actors do in those cases is that they put pillows between themselves and the other actors, particularly blocking both their private areas. When these scenes are filmed all that the director does is usually film above the waist.
When you draw up the scene perfectly you can make the folks watching believe what they want to believe. Still having to go through all of this 22 with his crush apparently was a bitter-sweet experience for Jake Gyllenhaal!
