8 stars who said filming nude scenes complicated their personal lives
8 stars who said filming nude scenes complicated their personal lives
Brianna ZiglerWed, September 30, 2026 at 5:00 PM UTC
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Sydney Sweeney; Margot Robbie; Kit HaringtonCredit: HBO; Paramount; HBO
Getting naked in front of someone in real life is mortifying enough as it is. Now imagine you had to do it all the time. In front of a camera. For your job.
Of course, intimate scenes often come with the territory for actors. Intimacy coordinators are frequently utilized on sets to help establish boundaries, facilitate communication and consent, and ensure that agreed-upon safety protocols are followed. Still, going fully nude for a movie or TV show — knowing the finished scene could be seen by millions of people — is an entirely different beast than staying fully, or even partially, clothed.
And occasionally, it can make things weird for an actor offscreen. It could complicate one’s dating life, like in Emmy Rossum’s case, or make for an awkward conversation with the grandparents, as with Sydney Sweeney.
Keep reading for eight stars who got candid about how filming nude scenes complicated their personal lives.
01 of 08
Olivia Colman
Olivia Colman in ‘The Roses’Credit: Searchlight
Oscar winner Olivia Colman admitted in September 2025 that she really doesn’t care for doing nude scenes in any project. “Pretending to have sex… I don’t like it,” she explained on Good Hang With Amy Poehler (via The Wrap).“Even when they go, ‘You can wear your jeans’ or a cushion between you. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that.”
Colman admitted she doesn’t like showing “any skin” at all, and doing sex scenes make her feel like she’s “being unfaithful” to her husband. “I don’t want to do that with someone I don’t know,” she said.
“The people that are good at it, I’ll watch them all day long, and they’re comfy,” Poehler added. “But the on-screen orgasm…”
“No, absolutely not… Thank God for intimacy coordinators,” Colman replied.
02 of 08
Jodie Comer
Jodie Comer in ‘The White Princess’Credit: Everett
In 2017, Jodie Comer admitted to W Magazine that her parents didn’t love her numerous nude scenes in the STARZ historical drama The White Princess, on which she starred as Queen Elizabeth of York.
“Nude scenes aren’t great for anyone, I don’t think,” Comer said candidly. “My dad’s like, ‘Jodie, ugh, really?’ And I’m like ‘Dad! It’s not my choice!’ Well, it is my choice… but, you know, if it’s in a script, there’s not much you can do about it.”
“The older I get the more I don’t really squirm about it,” she continued. “Like, I won’t watch it with them, and I’ll just know in the back of my head that they’ve seen that. And I go, “‘Okay…’”
03 of 08
Lena Dunham
Lena Dunham on ‘Girls’Credit: HBO
Lena Dunham’s body was a frequent topic of conversation during Girls’ run, partly due to the fact that she often appeared naked onscreen.
She comes from a family of artists, so she wasn’t nervous about her father seeing her nude scenes. “My dad paints penises for a job, so I’ve had to look at his art my whole life. So he can look at this,” she once told Vanity Fair. However, her mother, Laurie Simmons, felt differently.
“She may not mind, but her father definitely has difficulty watching the show. As does her mom,” she said in her own Vanity Fair interview. When asked if she averts her eyes while watching, Simmons responded, “Yeah, I kind of close my eyes and squinch up my face. But, I mean, because we’re her parents, it would be crazy to say that it’s cool with us. But the rest of it I really love. Really love.”
04 of 08
Kit Harington
Kit Harington on ‘Industry’Credit: HBO
Kit Harington went from the famously R-rated Game of Thrones to filming intimate scenes on Industry that surprised even him — especially as a father. “The more I do it, the more I think, ‘I think I should stop.’ I’ve got to start thinking about my kids, like, ‘Why is Daddy always naked on-screen?’” Harington confessed to his former Thrones costar Peter Dinklage during a Variety’s Actors on Actors interview.
In fact, Harington estimated to Jimmy Fallon in March 2026 that he’s nude for about “90%” of Industry. “My character has some kinks,” Harington explained. “And they came up to me and went, ‘Look, if you’re okay with this, we think your character is gonna get, well, peed on.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything.’”
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Now, he feels the writers ran away with his approval. “I saw their faces just, like, change,” he recalled. “And now in season 4, I’m doing all the things. And it’s very rare I’m dressed.”
05 of 08
Margot Robbie
Margot Robbie in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’Credit: Paramount
Margot Robbie’s breakout role was as Jordan Belfort’s wife in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). For the part, Robbie had to act out some fairly racy nude scenes for the camera. She wasn’t excited at the prospect of her family seeing them — so she created an elaborate lie about it.
“To be honest, I blatantly lied to them for a really long time,” Robbie told Vanity Fairin 2014.“At first I didn’t even mention the nudity. Then I admitted to the nudity but said that it was a body double, and they would CGI my head onto the body.”
“And they were like, ‘Really, they can do that?’ And I was like, ‘Oh technology these days, they can do anything, it’s crazy,’” she reflected. “And then I started being a bit more honest, and I was like, ‘Okay, look maybe I’m doing a bit of the nudity. And none of you can see it,’ and then they were like, ‘What, this is crazy. No, we have to see the movie.’”
She ended up making a bargain with her family in order to let them see the film: “So then I struck a deal and I said, ‘If you’re gonna see it, you have to read the book first. If you still want to see it after reading the book, then you can see it.’”
06 of 08
Emmy Rossum
Emmy Rossum on ‘Shameless’Credit: Showtime
Furious star Emmy Rossum has been happily married to Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail since 2017. But before that, she found that her role as Fiona Gallagher on Shameless caused some problems in her dating life.
“It got quite tricky because of the nudity on the show,” Rossum told Maria Sharapova on a September 2026 episode of Pretty Tough. “All of the guys that I would go out with had preconceived notions of who I was or how I was sexually.”
She specifically recalled an odd dating experience with a man who had political aspirations and was worried Rossum’s own career would reflect poorly on him. “He was like, ‘I really want to be president someday.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s like a great goal,’” she reflected. “He’s like, ‘But I feel like running for office dating someone who’s been like exposed in the way that you have, do you think that would be tricky for me?’ And I was like, ‘This is an insane conversation to have.’”
07 of 08
Hunter Schafer
Hunter Schafer on ‘Euphoria’Credit: HBO
As if knowing your parents are watching your sex scenes isn’t bad enough, Euphoria star Hunter Schafer has the added burden of her parents being pastors.
In an appearance on theCall Her Daddy podcast in 2024, Schafer reflected on telling her parents about her explicit sex scenes on Euphoria. And while she clarified that her parents’ congregation is “on the chiller side of Christianity,” she still felt “bad” about telling them.
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“There’s this whole pastor’s daughter trope. And it gets kind of tough,” she explained. “When I had to tell my parents, ‘In the first episode, I’m having anal sex with a 45-year-old and cutting myself in the arm,’ my first thought is like, okay, they have to tell their congregation that their kid’s going to be on TV, and then their congregation, who are just little old nice white Christian people from the south, are going to watch this TV show and see me getting f---ed. I still do feel bad because that’s something they still have to deal with.”
08 of 08
Sydney Sweeney
Sydney Sweeney on ‘Euphoria’Credit: HBO
You would think that, out of all the people in one’s life, grandparents would have the hardest time accepting an actor’s intimate scenes. That’s not the case for Schafer’s Euphoria costar Sydney Sweeney — though, you could argue her grandparents’ reaction was actually kind of worse than disapproval.
During an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in April 2022, Sweeney explained how she invited her whole family to the premiere of Euphoria season 2: “Like my grandparents, my uncle... I was like, ‘It’s a Hollywood premiere!’”
When DeGeneres exclaimed, “What were you thinking?” Sweeney assured her that her grandparents “told me I have the best tits in Hollywood.”
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
