Keira Knightley recently revealed she wouldn’t accept any more roles that include nude scenes if the film’s director is a man. According to the actress, she is not against posing nude, but she is unwilling to sacrifice her peace by feeling unease or awkward at a man’s stare. “It’s partly vanity, and also it’s the male gaze,” she said during her appearance on the Chanel Connects podcast.
In the conversation, Knightley told filmmaker Lulu Wang and writer Diane Solway why she added a no-nudity clause to her contracts. “If I was making a story that was about that journey of motherhood and body acceptance, I feel like, I’m sorry, but that would have to be with a female filmmaker,” she said. “I don’t want it to be those horrible sex scenes where you’re all greased up, and everybody is grunting. I’m not interested in doing that.”
“I don’t have an absolute ban, but I kind of do with men,” she revealed.
Although the 35-year-old star has shot sex scenes for films, such as Atonement, Colette, and The Aftermath, she said she also lost interest in doing nudes after giving birth. “Saying that there’s times where I go, ’Yeah, I completely see where this sex would be really good in this film, and you basically just need somebody to look hot,’” Knightley said. “So, therefore, you can use somebody else because I’m too vain, and the body has had two children now, and I’d just rather not stand in front of a group of men naked.”
© GettyImagesLast year, the British actress, who shares two children with James Righton , said she hadn’t filmed nude scenes in years, mainly because she now fears the clips would appear on porn sites. “I always felt completely comfortable doing it when I was younger,” she said, according to Ok! Magazine. “I never did anything that I didn‘t feel comfortable doing. I’m really happy with my body. It’s done an amazing thing. But I also don’t want to stand there in front of a whole film crew.”
“It used to be that you’d do a sex scene in isolation with the film, and it would make sense... But now, you can take the whole thing and put it in a completely different thing, and it’s on some porn site,” she said.
