“I find it a bit odd”: the controversial 2014 movie moment Eva Green defended as “really sexy, actually”
One of the hardest parts of making any R-rated movie is taking it to the censorship board for approval, and things didn’t even get that far before Eva Green found herself at the centre of an outcry.
Of course, Green has never had any issues baring all for the cameras, and it even helped put her on the map, with the actor’s breakthrough role coming in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 erotic drama, The Dreamers, even if her parents weren’t too keen on seeing her perform such explicit scenes.
It didn’t put her off, though, with the star acknowledging that it carried the risk of typecasting her as a sex symbol, which didn’t dissuade her from doing much the same in other productions like Camelot, Proxima, and 300: Rise of an Empire, not that she needed to take her kit off to become an era-defining ‘Bond girl’ when she starred alongside Daniel Craig as Casino Royale‘s Vesper Lynd.
Shooting intimate scenes is clearly something she doesn’t have an issue with, but it was something as innocuous as a promotional poster that saw the MPAA getting too hot under the collar for its own good, causing the poster in question to be pulled from circulation and banned for the most prudish reasons.
To promote Robert Rodriguez’s long-awaited comic book sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, in which Green played the femme fatale, Ava Lord, a black-and-white one-sheet was released that showed her character wearing a semi-open nightgown and brandishing a pistol. It fit the film’s aesthetic, but it was too much for the censors to bear, apparently.
Issuing a ruling, the MPAA pulled the poster “for nudity,” or, to be more accurate, showing the “curve of under breast and dark nipple/areola circle visible through sheer gown.” When word reached Green that it had been branded too titillating for the general public, she didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
“I find it a bit odd,” she admitted. “It seems like it’s all just publicity; a lot of noise for nothing. You have so many more violent things in the movie business, and this is kind of soft. I’m not naked. It’s suggested.” Suggested or not, the censorship board had decided that it had gone too far, leading the subject to mount an impassioned defence.
“I find it really sexy, actually,” Green opined. “It’s kind of beautiful. But if it shocks people, I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want to upset anybody.” It did leave her with one potential concern, albeit one that she’d already been facing for most of her mainstream acting career.
The actor mused that she doesn’t “want to be seen as just the femme fatale or put into some silly box,” adding her hope that “people will have enough imagination” to see her otherwise. They do, but when she was literally cast as a femme fatale in A Dame to Kill For, depicting it on a poster was apparently one step too far.
