As Keira Knightley says she won’t shoot one with a male director, the use of intimacy coordinators means that actors can be more comfortable with what they are asked to do
Once ubiquitous, the screen sex scene is in deep trouble. Keira Knightley, star of Misbehaviour, Official Secrets and Colette, appears to have driven the final nail in the coffin of the traditional sex scene with recent comments that she will no longer participate in “those horrible sex scenes where you’re all greased up and everybody is grunting”, and that she is not prepared to shoot sex scenes with male directors so as not to “portray the male gaze”.
Knightley’s stance reflects an increasing dissatisfaction with the way film-makers have handled such scenes in films and TV shows. Philippa Lowthorpe, who directed Knightley in Misbehaviour, the 2020 film about feminist protesters who disrupted the Miss World competition in 1970, admires the actor for her comments. “I totally understand where Keira is coming from. Intimate scenes make actors vulnerable by their very nature, so can be – and on many occasions have been – open to a misuse of power by directors.”
