Sexiest Scenes In A Movie

Sexiest Scenes In A Movie

Christopher Luu joined InStyle in 2018 and has worked in digital and print media for over a decade. Prior to being the Senior News Editor at InStyle, he held positions at Refinery29 and lifestyle publications in both Southern California and Washington, D.C., focusing on fashion, retail, and pop culture. He earned a B.A. degree in English Literature at Chapman University and maintains an encyclopedic knowledge of Fashion Week runway shows and viral internet pet videos.

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From Fifty Shades to Eyes Wide Shut , when movies go there with sex, it makes for plenty to talk about. From uproar over explicit content to the fine line between being rated R and the ever-elusive NC-17, movies are always trying to find a sweet spot between showing too much and expressing the artistic vision — and shock — that can come with a steamy sex scene.

According to Esquire , one of the very first movies to be screened for the public was 1896's The Kiss , which featured a full-on kiss and shocked the prim and proper 19th-century mindset. Moviegoers have come a long way since then, especially with the movies on this list, which range from full-on explicit to laugh-out-loud disbelief. With names Amy Schumer involved alongside Tom Cruise, it's no surprise that there really is something for everyone.

One of the '90s most eyebrow-raising movie moments happened when threesomes became part of normal conversation thanks to Denise Richards, Matt Dillon, and Neve Campbell looking to shed their glossy teen-movie personas.

According to Esquire , this unforgettable scene, which involved Jack Reynor, Isabelle Grill, and just about a million extras, took two weeks to film.

Say what you want about the not-so-vanilla scenes in this much-maligned movie series, the steamy, softcore BDSM sequences between Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan got people talking.

For another take on BDSM, viewers can check out this cult-favorite 2002 film starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. Gyllenhaal sauntered in her stockings and heels so Dakota Johnson could bring BDSM to the mainstream.

It's hard to believe that Showgirls is rated NC-17. It does, however, have the honor of being the highest-grossing movie with that rating. Elizabeth Berkley and Kyle MacLachlan star in everyone's favorite worst movie, which comes with a laughable sex scene for good measure.

While not exactly arousing, the gold medal-worthy sex scene between Sebastian Stan and The Big Bang Theory 's Melissa Rauch can best be described as "athletic." It's as far from a CBS sitcom as you can get.

Another scene that was meant to get laughs, John Cena and Amy Schumer reportedly ad-libbed the whole thing for a cringe-worthy moment that involves "there's no I in team," "just do it," and even phrases in Mandarin Chinese.

The sequel? Really? Even though the first Basic Instinct has some iconic film moments, the second installment included masturbation, an orgy, and a threesome. The threeway had to be cut so the film could avoid a NC-17 rating.

If viewers are looking for laughs alongside the love scenes, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder deliver more on the former than the latter in this rom-com.

What's more iconic? Tom Cruise's underwear-clad dance sequence, his Ray-Bans, or the train scene with Rebecca De Mornay?

Of course, Cruise had to be on the list twice. Who could forget this Stanley Kubric classic? Co-starring his then-wife Nicole Kidman, the couple was reportedly pushed to their limits during the production. They'd eventually divorce in 2001.

There's more than one unforgettable scene in this movie, but the scene-stealer in every single one might be Mark Wahlberg's enthusiasm — and his prosthetic penis, which was originally a foot long and had to be shortened because it looked too ridiculous.

Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman's on-screen tension comes to a head in one of the award-winning movie's most memorable scenes.

The movie that launched a million peach memes (and Timothée Chalamet's career) had more than a few steamy scenes.

OK, while this isn't technically a sex scene, it's an informative educational moment that brings the laughs no matter how many times people have seen it.

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Buckle up. Onscreen erotica comes in many forms.
Do you remember the first time you were sexually excited by an image on a screen? ( We do! ) ( Here too! ) It might've been a music video to a teen-pop bop, or a particularly mushy episode of Buffy . Most likely, it was a movie of the PG-13 persuasion, which you snuck a viewing of far from the eyes of your parents when you were nowhere near the age of 13. Looking back, those scenes were cute. Harmless. Nowhere near the sex scenes you've seen in movies since you branched out into the R-rated category and beyond.
Sex scenes are nearly as old as movies themselves. In fact, one of the first films to be screened for the public debuted in 1896 and was called The Kiss. It was quite steamy for its time, featuring a full-on brushing of the lips, which, let us tell you, really riled up the modest-minded folks of the late 19th century. But these days, a movie sex scene has to accomplish a lot more to be memorable—especially when we've been so impressed by the earth-shattering sex scenes appearing in television shows of late (see: Normal People and Sex/Life ). It has to be downright crazy.
"Crazy" can be broadly interpreted in the realm of onscreen sex. There's the hot stuff that begs for repeated watchings. There are downright hilarious sexual interactions that involve comedic timing, musical numbers, awkward improv, and/or puppets. There are scenes from horror movies that make us recoil in disgust, and boundary-pushing vignettes that inspire a trove of thought pieces. There's most of what Micky Rourke touched in the '80s. Here's a selection of 65 such movie sex scenes, from the classics to recent releases, each one seemingly steamier than the next.
Actors: Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal
Fun fact: With Brokeback , Ang Lee helped put LGBTQ+ stories into the mainstream, and the film won three out of its eight Oscar nominations.
Actors: Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara
Fun fact: Director Todd Haynes described the filming of the sex scene as "very much like shooting a musical number." Sure!
Actors: Willem Dafoe and Barbara Hershey
Fun fact: Audiences lost their minds when Jesus had sex with Mary Magdalene and fathered a child, but the film ultimately got away with it because it was technically during a hallucination that occurs as Jesus is nailed to the cross.
Fun fact: Rosie Perez's dance sequence at the beginning of the film to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” took over eight hours to film.
Actors: Ashton Sanders and Jharrel Jerome
Fun fact: It was the first time either actor had ever filmed a sex scene, and the film almost lost Best Picture at the Oscars to La La Land simply because presenter Faye Dunaway was given Emma Stone's Best Actress card to read by mistake.
Actors: Josh O'Connor and Alec Secăreanu
Fun fact: O'Connor and Secăreanu worked on a farm for weeks to learn how to handle farm chores and animals...and presumably, how to roll around in the mud.
Actors : Agathe Rousselle and a Cadillac
Fun fact : In all 11 drafts Ducournau wrote for Titane , the sex scene between Rousselle and a classic muscle car remained the same in each version of the script.
Actors: Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Rajkummar Rao, and Adarsh Gourav
Fun fact: Chopra Jonas is so famous in India that to facilitate the film's shooting, most of her scenes (much like this voyeuristic one) take place inside a car instead of out in public settings.
Actors: Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling
Fun fact: This film was originally slapped with an NC-17 rating because of its realistic oral sex scene, giving some interesting insight into how female pleasure on screen is critiqued. Gosling's response: “You shouldn’t be penalized for doing a good job.”
Fun fact: This film, about a woman whose vagina bares teeth to horrifying mid-sex results, has a shocking 80 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Actors: Keira Knightley and James McAvoy
Fun fact: Though the library sex scene is now considered iconic, it is somewhat overshadowed by the downright legendary green dress Knightley wears in it.
Actors: Alia Shawkat and Laia Costa
Fun fact: The basic premise of this film as that two women attempt to have sex once an hour for 24 straight hours.
Fun fact: To shoot the lesbian sex scene in a way that made his leads feel comfortable, Park gave the male crew members the day off, hired a female boom operator, and filmed the encounter with a remote controlled camera.
Actors: Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer
Fun fact: In the first and only rehearsal for this film, Guadagnino had his actors immediately act out the scene where they make out furiously. (This is also the film that launched a thousand peach memes.)
Actors: Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton
Fun fact: Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for this movie. Twenty years later, she remains the only Black woman to have won it.
Actors: Eiko Matsuda and Tatsuya Fuji
Fun fact: This erotic film featured unsimulated (a.k.a. very real) sex scenes between its actors, and thus kicked up a lot of controversy in 1976.
Actors: Jason Segel, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Russell Brand
Fun fact: To promote the film, billboards were placed around big cities attacking the fictional Sarah Marshall. That bothered some real-life Sarah Marshalls.
Actors: Will Smith and Hayley Marie Norman
Fun fact: Hancock, an alcoholic superhero stuck in the modern day with severe amnesia and sexual frustrations, is supposedly the Greek god Zeus, and his love interest/sister, played by Charlize Theron, is supposedly the Greek goddess Hera.
Actors: Jack Reynor, Isabelle Grill, and a lot of extras
Fun fact: It took two grueling weeks to film this nudity-filled, crazy-yet-terrifying ritualistic sex scene.
Actors: Garrett Clayton, Christian Slater, Keegan Allen, and James Franco
Fun fact: This film was based on a real-life murder plot within the gay porn industry.
Actors: Lisa Bonet and Mickey Rourke
Fun fact: A combination of rough sex, spurting blood, and Rourke's buttocks got this horror movie an X rating, before the scene was trimmed to appeal to the MPAA.
Directed by: Sam Taylor-Johnson; James Foley
Actors: Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan
Fun fact: This soft-core take on BDSM pulled in over $1 billion at the box office across all three movies. The books they was based on were actually fan-fic for the Twilight tween series.
Actors: Melissa Rauch and Sebastian Stan
Fun fact : Rauch used a body double for this movie's acrobatic sex scene, but Stan did not. That's flexibility.
Actors: Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana
Fun fact: Cameron is planning to make four Avatar sequels. No word yet if any will feature CGI tail sex, though.
Actors: Lakeith Stanfield and Armie Hammer
Fun fact: It wouldn't be a movie about soulless corporate ladder-climbing without coke-fueled orgies. Stanfield said he wanted to go nude, but his character's nudity was eventually cut from the script.
Directed by: Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam
Fun fact: The Monty Python troupe wrote a rousing musical number called "Every Sperm Is Sacred," along with this live sex ed demonstration.
Actors: Jada Pinkett Smith and Allen Payne
Fun fact: The sex scenes in this movie had to be cut down to avoid an NC-17 rating.
Fun fact: The evil scientist Durand-Durand who puts Barbarella through the Excessive Machine was the inspiration behind the band Duran Duran's name.
Actors: Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves
Fun fact: The non-stop, high-velocity banter between Ryder and Reeves throughout Destination Wedding does not let up during this awkward sex scene.
Actors: Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel
Fun fact: The Piano Teacher explores themes of sadomasochism and sexuality in a way that makes Fifty Shades look like Saturday morning cartoons.
Fun fact: Glazer hired people off the street, not actors, to portray the men who succumb to Johansson's alien allure and ultimately die in bizarre, mesmerizing ways.
Actors: Julianne Moore and Mark Wahlberg
Fun fact: Originally, Mark Wahlberg's prosthetic penis was 12 inches long, but because that looked ridiculous, it was shortened to seven inches.
Fun Fact: Two scenes, one of them a threesome, had to be cut from this film for it to avoid an NC-17 rating. The orgy scene and this masturbation scene remained, making the sequel that much crazier than the already-crazy first Basic Instinct .
Fun Fact: JGL knew he wouldn't get a big Hollywood studio to make his porn addiction movie, so he did it on his own.
Actors: Susan Sarandon and Peter Hinwood
Fun fact: Sarandon refused to appear nude during this much-beloved, musical ensemble number.
Fun Fact: Cena said this scene was written to be much more physical, but Schumer and Apatow let him ad lib, so it became something truly memorable.
Actors: Tommy Wiseau and Juliette Danielle
Fun Fact: Wiseau claimed, "I have to show my ass or this movie won't sell." Show his ass he did.
Directed by: Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon
Actors: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, and many more
Fun Fact: This was the first ever 3D CGI-animated film to get an R rating by the MPAA, for obvious reasons.
Actors: Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams
Fun fact: McAdams said the saliva used in this scene was actually lychee-flavored lube.
Actors: Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader
Fun fact: This was one of few mainstream films to portray BDSM as sex positive, long before 50 Shades of Grey entered the scene.
Actors: Garance Marillier and Rabah Nait Oufella
Fun fact: People allegedly fainted while watching this gory, French cannibalism movie. Consider yourself warned.
Actors: Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman
Fun Fact: This psychological thriller is one of just six horror films to ever be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
Actor: Tiffany Haddish and a banana
Fun Fact: Though not an actual sex scene, this bonkers grapefruiting demonstration got the crew on Girls Trip to start sending Haddish love letters and jewelry for her performance.
Actors: Cameron Diaz and a 2013 Ferrari California HS
Fun fact: Angelia Jolie turned down the role of Malkina. Wonder why?
Actors: Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger
Fun fact: Basinger used a body double for all of her sex scenes.
Actors: Michael Fassbender and Amy Hargreaves
Fun fact: The Standard Hotel in Manhattan's Meatpacking District is notorious for couples having sex against the floor-to-ceiling windows, as one scene in this movie demonstrates.
Actors: Elizabeth Berkley and Kyle MacLachlan
Fun fact: Showgirls is the highest-grossing NC-17 movie of all time.
Actors: Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie
Fun fact: The scene still seems so natural and real that rumors abound that Sutherland and Christie weren't really acting.
Actors: Aomi Muyock, Karl Glusman, and Klara Kristin
Fun fact: The unsimulated sex scenes were arguably more exciting during the film's 3D theatrical release.
Actors: Nicole Kidman and John Cusack
Fun fact: This is the movie in which Nicole Kidman peed on Zac Efron. And yet that's not the most shocking scene of the film.
Actors: Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos
Fun fact: One of the multiple sex scenes in this film took ten days to shoot, and sparked intense conversations about a director's responsibility to actors' well-being on set.
Actors: Bradley Cooper and Michael Ian Black
Fun fact: This sex scene was all improv. Including the part where they keep their socks on.
Actors: Malin Akerman and Patrick Wilson
Fun fact: Snyder actually thought it would be a good idea to set a superhero sex scene to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."
Actors: Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris
Fun fact: Pike practiced this murderous sex scene using a Dora the Explorer doll. She also requested that she and Harris spend two hours alone on set preparing.
Actors: Denise Richards, Matt Dillon, and Neve Campbell
Fun fact: The crew found a dead body before filming a river scene. The police simply anchored the corpse to the shore out of site until filming was completed.
Actors: Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, and Ana López Mercado
Fun fact: Luna is not circumcised. That penis you see is pure prosthetic.
Actors: Two puppets voiced by Trey Parker and Kristen Miller
Fun fact: After showing an initial version of the film to the Motion Picture Association of America, the board gave it an NC-17 rating for the sex scene. After at least nine edits, the film finally got bumped down to an R rating.
Actors: Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander
Fun fact: Dev Patel's character finishes all over a a magical girdle given to him by his mother that was supposed to keep him invulnerable.
Actors: Clive Owen and Monica Bellucci
Fun fact: This film had a body count of 151—nine during this sex scene.
Actors: Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay
Fun fact: This movie, in which Cruise wears Ray-Ban Wayfarers, boosted sales of the model by 50 percent.
Actors: Sydney Sweeney, Justice Smith, Ben Hardy, and Natasha Liu Bordizzo
Fun fact: An actor is either shown nude or having sex every five minutes of The Voyeurs until it's thrilling ending.
Actors: Cara Seymour, Guinevere Turner, and Christian Bale
Fun fact: Bale based his Patrick Bateman off Tom Cruise, as he called it "this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes."
Actors: Will Forte and Maya Rudolph
Fun fact: Rudolph was eight months pregnant while shooting her scenes.
Actors: Andra Day and Trevante Rhodes
Fun fact: Lee Daniels was hesitant to cast Andra Day, but he became convinced after she sent him a clip taken on her iPhone.
Actors: Tom Cruise and a lot of naked people in scary masks
Fun fact: Many of the orgy guests were computer-generated figures that obscured the sex acts, allowing the film to get an R rating.

Edited by Andy Kryza Thursday 30 June 2022
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