Michael Douglas reveals reason he hates use of intimacy coordinators
Michael Douglas thinks the use of intimacy coordinators is wrecking movie sex scenes.
The 79-year-old Hollywood veteran, famed for his romps in films including ‘Basic Instinct’ and ‘Fatal Attraction’, says the experts are “taking control” away from filmmakers when it comes to showing actors getting intimate.
He told the Radio Times: “I’m past the age where I’ve got to worry about that! But it’s interesting with intimacy co-ordinators. It feels like executives taking control from filmmakers.”
Michael added he accepts the need to make sure women are not being exploited on screen in the wake of Hollywood’s #MeToo movement, but insisted it should be the responsibility of the male actor to ensure his film partner was comfortable.
He said: “In my experience, you take responsibility as the man to make sure the woman is comfortable.
“You say, ‘I’m going to touch you if that’s all right.’
“It’s slow but looks like it’s happening organically.”
Michael, who has two children – Dylan, 23, and 20-year-old Carys – with his actress wife of 24 years Catherine Zeta Jones, 54, last month said at the peak of his 1980s and ’90s fame actors would have taken “care of those that overstep boundaries” during sex scenes.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “I’m sure there were people that overstepped their boundaries, but before, we seemed to take care of that ourselves. They would get a reputation and that would take care of them.
“But I talked to the ladies, (as) I did a few of those sex movies – sexual movies – and we joke about it now, what it would have been like to have an intimacy coordinator working with us.”
Michael’s comments come a month after his ‘Basic Instinct’ co-star Sharon Stone, 66, said now-dead Hollywood producer Robert Evans, who passed away aged 89 in 2016, pressured her to have sex in real life with Alec Baldwin’s actor brother Billy, 61, as he thought it would improve his performance in their erotic thriller ‘Sliver’.