Directing an intimate scene for a film can be a tricky thing to do. The actors who are performing the scene have to be more comfortable with the director’s vision than they are with each other.
But, that trust doesn’t come easy. Actors have, in fact, countless times walked away from a film as they thought the intimate scene demanded a lot from them. The ones who stayed had to make each other comfortable. Toni Collette (Knives Out) has views on this!
Filmmakers, for that sole purpose, started to hire intimacy coordinators. They are becoming increasingly popular in the industry as they provide artists and directors a common ground.
For some, like Toni Collette (Hereditary) in this case, intimacy coordinators are an occupational bane. As for others, like Kate Winslet (Titanic), they were much needed when she was a young actress.
Toni Collette Shooed Away Intimacy Coordinators
Intimate scenes don’t simply mean making out with a co-star. The directors often want tiny details done right; for example, the walk and the touch.
Toni Collette, 50, told The Times UK in an interview that she can’t stand intimacy coordinators. Instead of being an asset, they end up making her anxious.
“It just felt like those people [intimacy coordinators] who were brought in to make me feel more at ease were actually making me feel more anxious. They weren’t helping, so I asked them to leave,” she said.
Toni Collette also highlighted the fact in her conversation that she has worked with problematic people in the past, but she believes in the production and wants to “serve the director’s vision.”
Kate Winslet Showed Support For Intimacy Coordinators
In an interview with BBC Radio, Titanic (1997) star Kate Winslet spoke about how an intimacy coordinator would have made her life easy when she was a young actor.
Titanic became Winslet’s first major role and while she must have been scared, she performed the famous n-de scene – “Draw me like one of your French girls.”
“Now, when I was younger, I never had a single person like that. And it’s quite scary and intimidating to be a young person and to find it uncomfortable to even say certain words, be they intimate or s-xual in nature. Just making those words come out of your mouth when you’re young can be really awkward,” said Winslet.
She also won an Oscar for The Reader (2008) wherein she bared multiple times and had intimate scenes with a young David Kross. Intimacy coordinators weren’t a thing then.
Toni Collette currently stars in Amazon Studios’ The Power. The science fiction series aired on March 31.
Source: The Times UK, BBC
