One of Jake Gyllenhaal’s early breakout roles was in The Good Girl, the 2002 comedy-drama written by Mike White (The White Lotus) that also starred John C. Reilly, Tim Blake Nelson, Zooey Deschanel, and Jennifer Aniston. The film has a stacked cast, but the experience was “torture” for Gyllenhaal due to his crush on the Friends actress.
During a recent appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Gyllenhaal was asked by Howard Stern what it was like to film a romantic scene with Aniston, with the host sarcastically suggesting that it must have been “torture” for him. “Oh yeah, it was torture, yes it was,” The Guilty star replied while laughing. “But it was also not torture. I mean, come on, it was like a mix of both.” He continued:
“Weirdly, love scenes are awkward, because there are maybe 30, 50 people watching it? That doesn’t turn me on,” Gyllenhaal, 40, said. “It’s oddly mechanical. And also it’s a dance, you’re choreographing for a camera. You can get in it but it’s like a fight scene, you have to choreograph those scenes.”
Gyllenhaal used the “pillow technique” for his sex scene with Aniston. “That was just preemptive and used generally always when actually in a horizontal place in that movie,” he said. “I think that was actually a Jennifer suggestion, she was very kind to suggest it before we began. She was like, ‘I’m putting a pillow here.’”
You can watch his The Howard Stern Show interview above.
(Via Yahoo!)