The Counterintuitive Reason Jennifer Lawrence Prefers Sex Scenes With Strangers

Jennifer Lawrence talked about the thing nobody ever really wants to talk about: filming sex scenes. Short version: she gets nervous at the start of every movie, prefers to rip the Band-Aid off early, and says it is a lot easier to do the intimate stuff with someone she does not already know.

Get the awkward stuff done first

On stage at 92NY with Josh Horowitz, Lawrence said she still gets anxious before day one on a new set, so she tries to knock out any intimate scenes right away. That is not a flex; it is self-preservation. And in her latest film, Die My Love, she actually started with what she described as a wild, animalistic nude sequence opposite Robert Pattinson, whom she had never met before filming. For her, that anonymity makes the whole thing less weird.

'It was actually easier that way because Rob and I did not know each other, which is kind of better, you know?'

Strangers vs friends, and why it matters

Lawrence even pointed back to The Hunger Games to explain it. Kissing scenes with Josh Hutcherson, a friend she spent years working with, were tougher because the familiarity cranked up the awkward factor. In her words, doing those kinds of scenes with a friend is just... weirder. With a stranger, it feels more like a scene and less like a boundary issue.

Lynne Ramsay, movement class, and the path to not caring

She was very candid about how inherently embarrassing acting can be, and said Lynne Ramsay (who directed Die My Love) did not exactly ease them in gently. Ramsay had Lawrence and Pattinson arrive in Calgary three weeks before shooting for movement work that veered into interpretive dance territory. Both of them embarrass easily, and those exercises were mortifying by design. Think high-art warm-ups where you are asked to sway like a tree in the wind. After a few weeks of that, being told to strip down for the scene felt comparatively straightforward. Also, by Lawrence's own admission, she is not a dancer and she joked that Pattinson is even less of one, which did not make those rehearsals any less cringe-inducing.

• Where she said it: a 92NY conversation with Josh Horowitz
• The project: Die My Love, directed by Lynne Ramsay
• The co-star in that first big scene: Robert Pattinson (they had not met before the shoot)
• Prep: three weeks in Calgary doing movement/interpretive dance work
• Her takeaway: intimate scenes are easier with strangers; doing them with friends is weirder
• Availability: Die My Love is streaming on Mubi

Bottom line: sex scenes are awkward for basically everyone, including Oscar winners. Lawrence just prefers to front-load the discomfort and do it with someone she has not already shared inside jokes with for years.