Henry Cavill Shares Controversial Opinion About Sex Scenes in Films

Henry Cavill recently explained why he finds sex scenes in movies and TV “a cop-out.” The Man of Steel star was appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast alongside Matthew Vaughn, who directed Cavill in the spy parody Argylle. The PG-13-rated action pic, which bombed at the box office last weekend, notably doesn’t feature any on-screen sex because, as Vaughn admitted, “I can’t get my head around sex scenes. It’s just something I don’t understand."

“I also don’t understand them. I’m not a fan,” Cavill replied, visibly nervous to be on the subject. “I’m not a fan of doing them.”

Cavill elaborated: “There are circumstances where a sex scene is beneficial to a movie, rather than just the audience…[but] I think sometimes they’re overused these days. It’s when you have a sense that you’re going, ‘Is this really necessary, or is it just people with less clothing on?’”

He noted that’s the point at which he gets “uncomfortable” because it’s not helping the overall product. ‘There’s not a performance here. There’s not a piece which is going to carry through to the rest of the movie," Cavill explained.

While he admitted that there are certain sex scenes that “can be great [for] a movie" and "really help with the storytelling," he thinks that too often writers and directors fall back on them to compensate for script deficiencies.

"I think it can be a little bit of a cop-out if a TV show or a movie is just filled with gyrating bodies,” Cavill said. “You’re going, ‘Okay, but what is this doing for us apart from the idea of, 'Oh, naked person, great?’”

Cavill’s opposition to sex scenes might be due to an unfortunate experience while starring in his breakout role on The Tudors, which had more than its share of explicit sex scenes. In 2015, Cavill spoke to Men’s Fitness (a brand, like Men's Journal, owned by The Arena Group) about a humiliating circumstance during filming.

“The actual physicality is very uncomfortable. All you’re doing is smacking your nuts against someone, and nothing is going in,” he explained. “A girl had to be on top of me, she had spectacular breasts, and I hadn’t rearranged my...stuff into a harmless position,” Cavill continued. “She’s basically rubbing herself all over me and, um, it got a bit hard. I had to apologize profusely afterward.

“It’s not great when you’re in a professional acting environment and somebody gets a boner, is it? No, not acceptable,” Cavill said.

Cavill also revealed to Men’s Fitness that his brothers teased him “mercilessly” for appearing in the scenes. The actor admittedly hadn’t considered the wide-reaching consequences of agreeing to bare it all on camera.

“You don’t think of sex scenes as showing your bum to the nation,” Cavill reflected. “It’s actually acutely uncomfortable being naked in a roomful of people. The very last thing it is is sexy.”

You can watch Cavill and Vaughn’s full Happy Sad Confused interview below.