Emma Stones Oscars win brings new low for sex scenes with films racier than ever - Jess Phil

Publish date: 2024-07-06

Emma Stone strode away with the Best Leading Actress award at the 2024 Oscars – and the win heralds a new low for sex scenes in Hollywood.

Now this isn’t me saying Emma didn’t deserve the award. She’s a perfectly fine actress, and managed to beat off competition from Carey Mulligan, Sandra Hüller, Annette Bening and Lily Gladstone. She played the child-like Bella Baxter passionately enough that while watching, I truly believed she was the reincarnated Frankenstein’s monster mashup of her unborn foetus and the suicidal tendencies of her predecessor.

The film sees Bella experimenting with self-pleasure at the breakfast table using an apple, before she becomes entwined in various saucy positions to romp all over Europe with Duncan Weddeburn (Mark Ruffalo). Most of its two and a half hour run-time was filled with sex in some form or another.

READ MORE: Billie Eilish unrecognisable in schoolgirl chic as she dons tiny skirt for Oscars 2024

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So what will the win mean for sex scenes in cinema? This year’s Oscars were racier than ever, with Oppenheimer – which sees Florence Pugh strip off with Cillian Murphy – scooping seven awards, while Poor Things took home four.

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While Saltburn didn’t receive any nods at the ceremony, it proved to be one of the most successful films of 2023, featuring a scene where Barry Keoghan’s character laps up the semen-streaked bathwater of his university chum, and then humps his grave.

I can only imagine that the Oscars 2025 will feature films with some of the most bizarre romps ever. In House PR’s Alexandra Villa told Daily Star ahead of the ceremony that filmmakers seem to be responding to the rise of adult sites like OnlyFans – but should Hollywood really have to compete in that area? Isn’t that what the XXX-rated industry is for?

Alexandra said: “It's no secret that Hollywood has struggled financially the last few years. So throwing in more sex to movies is a roll of the dice to make more money.”

For the actors in particular, while some seem keen to strip off for new on-screen experiences, others are done with their jobs being sexed up. Henry Cavill has complained that the industry is “overusing” sex scenes, while You star Penn Badgley forced Netflix to cut the amount of racy romps as they were “disturbing” to perform.

He admitted: “That aspect of Hollywood has always been very disturbing to me — and that aspect of the job, that mercurial boundary — has always been something that I actually don’t want to play with at all.” He said sex scenes affect the “fidelity” of his real-life relationships – so why should they be forced to continue?

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We’ve heard plenty from the #MeToo movement exposing sexual assault in Hollywood, of stars being "tricked" or "forced" into performing for the camera. Sharon Stone even claims she was “tricked” into going knickerless for her Basic Instinct role.

Plenty of directors who wanted to include un-simulated sex in their films opted to have porn actors as body doubles – adults who have knowingly consented to a career in sex work. But for mainstream actors trying to get their foot in the door, the pressure could always prove too much, and Poor Things’ accolades could usher in a new wave of cinematic raunch.

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