DAME Emma Thompson has revealed that she has filmed her first nude scene at the age of 62. Speaking in a virtual interview to promote her new film Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, she confirmed she will appear in one scene without any clothes.
One question, why?
In the film Thompson plays a teacher who hires a male escort played by Daryl McCormack, in the hope of experiencing an orgasm for the first time.
And how does she feel about all of this?
‘It’s very challenging to be nude at 62,” she told Cinema Cafe in an interview to tie in with the film’s premiere. “I don’t think I could’ve done it before the age that I am.
‘And yet,” she added, “of course, the age that I am makes it extremely challenging because we aren’t used to seeing untreated bodies on-screen.’
What does she mean by “untreated bodies”?
No, Thompson has been outspoken in her opposition to cosmetic surgery procedures.
"I do honestly think the cutting of yourself off to put it in another place in order to avoid appearing to do what you're actually doing, which is aging, which is completely natural, is a form of collective psychosis,” she also said. “I really do think it's a very strange thing to do."
There’s a bravery about showing the ageing body in a world of cosmetic surgery, high-definition and CGI effects.
There is. And Thompson also made the point that both in her profession and in the wider world there is still huge pressure on women to conform to particular body types.
“This thing of having to be thin is still the same as it ever was, and actually, in some ways I think it’s worse now,” she said.
Why are we talking about Emma Thompson’s nude scene, anyway? Doesn’t her male co-star also take his clothes off?
Thompson has said that during rehearsals she, McCormack and even the director Sophie Hyde all disrobed. But Thompson’s fame and age has inevitably grabbed the headlines.
Cinema has historically always foregrounded the male gaze, as the vast majority of writers and directors have been men. And male actors are often more reluctant to appear naked. The writer and director James Ivory has claimed that the agents of both Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer were insistent that their clients would not appear full frontal in the film Call Me By Your Name.
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