DIFFERENT TIME

Jane Fonda Reflects on ‘Hard’ Sex Scenes Early in Career

The Oscar-winner said she “wishes” there were intimacy coordinators “when I was doing sex scenes.”

Jane Fonda reflected on how “hard” sex scenes were for her in a new interview, explaining why she “wishes” there were intimacy coordinators working on sets when she started out. “Every time you begin a movie, you have training—what to do if there’s a problem,” she told Women’s Wear Daily during an interview at Cannes, but “that never happened,” back in her day. “I wish that we had them when I was doing sex scenes because it’s hard,” Fonda said. “You want me to say to a guy you’re supposed to look like you’re in love with and you say, ‘But please don’t uncover my breast on the left side,’” she continued, envisioning what it would have been like to speak up about boundaries at the height of her fame in the late 60s. “You know, you don’t do that.” 1968’s Barbarella was the film that established Fonda as a sex symbol, and she discussed what it was like shooting intimate scenes for that film and others back then in the 2022 documentary Body Parts. “I was at a place in my life where if you were asked to do something, especially by a man, you did it,” she says in the documentary.