Jake Gyllenhaal admitted that it was “torture” filming the 2002 romantic drama The Good Girl with Jennifer Aniston — because he had a big, fat crush on her.
“Oh, it was torture. Yes it was,” the 40-year-old actor confessed on The Howard Stern Show. “But it was also not torture. I mean, come on, it was like a mix of both.”
Gyllenhaal also described what it’s really like to act out an intimate scene, saying they are not all that enjoyable to film. “Weirdly, love scenes are awkward, because there are maybe 30, 50 people watching it? You know, maybe if you have a closed set, it’s less…That doesn’t turn me on,” he explained.
Gyllenhaal also noted that the scenes feel “oddly mechanical” and not natural.
“And also, it’s a dance, right? It’s a dance…You’re choreographing for a camera,” he said, likening it to filming a “fight scene” because those, too, require a strict set of instructions.
The Spider-Man: Far From Home star added that Aniston called the shots when filming their love scene and, in order to make herself feel more comfortable when they were lying in the horizontal position, he recalls her stating beforehand, “I’m putting a pillow here.”
The Good Girl drew in a modest $16.9 million during its box office run when it premiered in August 2002. It also starred Zooey Deschanel, John C. Reilly, John Carroll Lynch and Tim Blake Nelson.
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