Sometimes the flesh-to-flesh contact onscreen looks so real, you might wonder if the actors are really doing it. But sometimes we have more than an inkling. Here are several examples through the years. Viewers watching the hit romance An Officer and a Gentleman back in might have felt there was a certain authenticity to the lovemaking between Richard Gere and Debra Winger.
Based on the true story of Sada Abe, a Japanese woman who — spoiler alert — erotically asphyxiated her lover then cut off his penis and kept it in her handbag, In the Realm of the Senses is as explicit as you'd expect given the subject matter. The sex is real; the murder and genital removal is, thankfully, not. The subject matter of A Real Young Girl is The film focuses on the sexual exploration of year-old Alice Charlotte Alexandra.
They say we think about sex every seven seconds, and the men and women in the following films are actually doing the deed every seven seconds. Okay, that may be a stretch, but make no mistake—the subsequent roundup features movies about sex and not much else. Want more? Check out the best movie sex scenes of all time.
Here's the thing. People have sex. Movies have sex scenes. Wouldn't it be intriguing if a movie featured two actors having actual, consensual sex, instead of just mimicking sex in a way that looks great onscreen but is almost certainly very, very awkward in real life?