Gwyneth Paltrow is returning to the big screen for the first time in many years, and a few things have changed on movie sets during her time away.
The Oscar winner stars in the new film “Marty Supreme” in which she has “a lot of sex” with her 29-year-old co-star, Timothée Chalamet.
“I was like, ‘Okay, great. I’m 109 years old. You’re 14,’” Paltrow, who is 52, told Vanity Fair in an interview published Tuesday.
While she’s done sex scenes before, Paltrow discovered that “there’s now something called an intimacy coordinator” on set during said scenes.
Intimacy coordinators choreograph and guide intimate scenes in film and television, making sure actors feel safe and supported throughout the process.
The new position, which rose to prominence during the Me Too movement in Hollywood was something Paltrow “did not know existed.”
“I was like, ‘Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on,’” Paltrow recalled of a conversation she had with a coordinator on set. “We said, ‘I think we’re good. You can step a little bit back.’”
Paltrow explained why she didn’t feel the coordinator was the right move for someone like her.
“I don’t know how it is for kids who are starting out, but ... if someone is like, ‘Okay, and then he’s going to put his hand here,’ I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that,” she shared.
While some actors ― like Sean Bean and Michael Caine ― have voiced their disdain for coordinators, others, like Ewan McGregor, have called their addition “necessary.’”
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“It’s still necessary, because it’s also about the crew,” McGregor said of the importance of coordinators ― even when doing sex scenes with his own wife, who is also an actor. “And it’s odd to be naked in front of people, it’s odd to be intimate in front of the camera.”
He also stressed the importance of coordinators for younger actors, like his own children.
“My daughter is 22,” McGregor added. “If an older, famous director goes to a 22-year-old and says, ‘I want you to be naked in this scene,’ that actress might feel, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve got to do it, my career might depend on it.’”