Keira Knightley has said she will no longer do sex scenes, but which of her previous ones were her or a stunt-double? and what did she say about them?

Speaking on a recent Chanel Connects podcast episode, actress Keira Knightly reconfirmed her new stance on filming sex scenes. Now, she says she will only film them if they are directed by a woman.

“If I was making a story that was about that journey of motherhood and body [acceptance], I feel like, I’m sorry, but that would have to be with a female film-maker,”

“If it was about motherhood, about how extraordinary that body is, about how suddenly you’re looking at this body that you’ve got to know and is your own and it’s seen in a completely different way and it’s changed in ways which are unfathomable to you before you become a mother, then yeah, I would totally be up for exploring that with a woman who would understand that. But I feel very uncomfortable now trying to portray the male gaze.”

She then clarified why she feels differently now to earlier in her career:

“I don’t want it to be those horrible sex scenes where you’re all greased up and everybody is grunting. I’m not interested in doing that. Saying that, there’s times where I go, ‘Yeah, I completely see where this sex would be really good in this film and you basically just need somebody to look hot’, so therefore you can use somebody else, because I’m too vain, and the body has had two children now, and I’d just rather not stand in front of a group of men naked.”

What has Keira Knightley said about her previous sex scenes?

As Keira Knightly said herself, she was previously okay with filming nude scenes, so what has she said about some of her biggest ones?

Her favourite sex scene was Atonement

In 2007, Keira Knightley filmed Atonement and starred in a rememberable bookshelf scene with James McAvoy. Although she’s reluctant to film them now, the director was her friend Joe Wright, and she praised his professionalism too.

“The best sex scene I’ve done on-screen is the one in Atonement, on the bookshelf,” she told Vulture. “It was both the best sex scene but also (the best) to shoot.”

“That was orchestrated within an inch of its life. It was, ‘Foot goes up there, hand goes down there’, and that is a really good sex scene.”

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Keira Knightley used a body double for The Aftermath’s sex scene

2019 film The Aftermath did include a nudity scene, however Keira Knightley used a body-double for it. Citing similar reasons for her latest decision, she explained being post-child made a difference:

“On this film there was a body double, so this wasn’t me. I was totally comfortable with doing nudity when I was younger, but post-child? Hey, I am really happy with the body. It did exactly what it needed to do, it grew her, I birthed her, I fed her,” she said in an interview with Body and Soul.

Her The Duchess scene was comical

The Duchess featured a sex scene between Keira Knightley and co-star Dominic Cooper, who apparently wore a nude-coloured nappy to do it. Never the less, no body double was used for this one…though she might have wished for one upon sight of a nappy.

“We are all meant to be supportive of each other in these difficult and embarrassing scenes, but I took one look at him and just lost it,” she told the Daily Mail.

“I couldn’t stop laughing because Dominic was trying to be dignified and aloof while looking completely ridiculous. The director came over and said, ‘Pull yourself together. This is serious work.’”

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Keira Knightley was hesitant about A Dangerous Method

In an interview with Reuters, Keira Knightley recounted her back and forth around playing the role in A Dangerous Method, knowing it had a sex scene. The film however is about psychoanalysis and the scenes were far from sexy, which ultimately swayed her decision.

“So, I phoned up David and said, ‘I love you, I love your work, but I really don’t think that I want to do this.’ And he said, ‘Well it would be a tragedy if you turned the role down because of that, so if necessary we can take them out.’ And I said, ‘No, because I understand why they are there’. He said, ‘Well look, I don’t want it to be sexy, and I don’t want it to be voyeuristic. I want it to be clinical.’

“We talked for quite a long time about exactly what it was and trying to understand it psychologically. Once we discussed, I said ‘Alright, fine, as long as it is not sexy. That brutal horrible aspect is kept, and it isn’t a sexy spanking scene.’”

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