Reese Witherspoon has reflected on the discomfort she felt shooting sex scenes for the 1996 psychological thriller Fear when she was just 19.
The Oscar-winning actress, who is now 48, starred opposite Mark Wahlberg, who was 23 at the time, in the James Foley directed flick.
One scene sees her character, Nicole, receive sexual pleasure from Wahlberg’s character David while they are riding a rollercoaster.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar for its August cover issue, Witherspoon said: “I didn’t have control over [the scene].”
Stipulating that she requested a stunt double for the below-the-waist scenes, she added: “It wasn’t explicit in the script that that’s what was going to happen, so that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it, and I said no. It wasn’t a particularly great experience.”
Insisting that she was “certainly not traumatised or anything by it”, Witherspoon said that she regarded the experience “formative” for her.
“It made me understand where my place was in the pecking order of filmmaking,” she explained. “I think it’s another one of those stories that made me want to be an agent for change and someone who maybe can be in a better leadership position to tell stories from a female perspective instead of from the male gaze.”
The Standard has contacted a representative for Mark Wahlberg and James Foley for comment.
