“You can’t win”: Why Michael Caine “hates” sex scenes
Sex sells. It always has, and it always will, but that doesn’t mean every actor to have ever partaken in the act of simulated copulation in front of the cameras has had a whale of a time doing so. He might be a legend in every sense of the world, but Michael Caine is no fan of on-screen shagging.
Fortunately, it hasn’t become a regular part of his oeuvre, with his iconic status affording him the opportunity to say no were any filmmaker to approach him with a salacious suggestion or two. He’s a great actor, one of Britain’s best-ever, but it may have worked to Caine’s benefit that he was never held up as a sex symbol or irresistible heartthrob.
That doesn’t mean he hasn’t done any sex scenes whatsoever throughout his storied stint in the cinematic spotlight, but the ever-looming threat of a domestic tiff has constantly been at the forefront of his mind. As the two-time Academy Award winner explained to Fresh Air, it’s perfectly fine to go home after a hard day’s work playing a murderer, but heaven forfend the missus finds out he’s been bumping uglies with a co-star.
The recent retiree outlined how “I’m a very good actor and I played a very good part as a murderer and my wife thinks it’s very convincing and fabulous, and she’s very pleased with me and I’m a very good actor.” When things take a turn for the titillating, however, the opinion undergoes a complete 180-degree shift and leads to palpable tensions in the Caine household.
“If I put the same amount of sincerity and skill and dexterity into a love scene, she says, ‘Was there anything going on between you two?,'” he continued. “You see? So you can’t win.” It’s a fairly defeatist attitude to have when it’s all make-believe at the end of the day, but on the other hand, it’s not as if cinema history isn’t littered with co-stars who fell for each other after playing a pair of passionate lovers.
Caine’s distaste for getting down to the nitty-gritty extends into “kissing and cuddling and sometimes nudity and that,” which he believes “sort of gets in the way of everything.” Boiling his sentiments right down to their very essence, the star couldn’t have made his thoughts on the matter any clearer: “I hate it all.”
Not once in his life has he ever performed a nude scene, either, which led to him turning down the chance to collaborate with Ken Russell on 1969’s romantic drama Women in Love. He rejected the overtures “because I won’t appear stark naked in anything,” but rather bizarrely, he seemed even more concerned with what his long-dead father might think.
“My dad will be spinning in his grave if I’m rolling around on the ground with Alan Bates with no clothes on,” Caine concluded, which is as good a reason as any for knocking back the chance to work with one of the nation’s foremost filmmakers.
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