Kim Basinger “can’t imagine” what it’s like to work with an intimacy coordinator, despite the practice becoming a new industry norm.
Basinger, whose most recent onscreen role was in the 2017 film “Fifty Shades Darker,” told Variety that she doesn’t understand why intimacy coordinators are used on sets.
“I can’t imagine having somebody come up to me and say, ‘Do you mind if they put their hand here?’” Basinger said. “That’s just another person in the room. Either we work it out or we don’t. I don’t see all of this need for supervised visits.”
She continued, “It’s a very hard thing to shoot a beautiful love scene. You think it’s just lay[ing] down with a bunch of baby oil. It’s not. It can really work your nerves.”
Basinger noted that her own attitude toward sex onscreen is “more European” than “stuffy” American views.
Basinger most famously starred in Adrian Lyne’s erotic drama “9 1/2 Weeks” alongside Mickey Rourke. There was no intimacy coordinator used for the 1986 film, as it wasn’t a formal practice until 2017. Basinger also told Variety that the film probably could not be made (or remade) today.
“I have found that I have some of the most loyal fans in the world because of ‘9 1/2 Weeks,’” Basinger said, citing the influence of legendary genre filmmaker Lyne.
“I was very crazy about him,” Basinger said, adding that her relationship with the director was “love-hate,” at times, too. “Talk about out of the box and unafraid. He’s fought censorship his whole life, which is a bad war to fight all the time.”
Basinger, whose roles have spanned from playing a Bond girl in 1983’s “Never Say Never Again” to a femme fatale in neo-noir “L.A. Confidential,” further spoke out about being labeled as a “sexual” actress.
“I didn’t ever think of myself as a sexual Bond thing,” Basinger said. “I saw those women and I thought, ‘Jesus, I don’t have that!’ I grew up a tomboy. […] You come into this town, and you’re an ingenue. But you’re basically put in a box. We all are.”
That mentality also led her to question taking certain roles, including “L.A. Confidential,” before she read the script. She eventually won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the film in 1998.
“I said, ‘Well, I’m not interested in playing a whore. Not doing it. I’m a mom, so I’m not going to play that,’” Basinger recalled of her hesitation at the time.
Basinger’s fellow ’80s icon Michael Douglas recently also questioned why intimacy coordinators are part of the industry. The “Basic Instinct” and “Fatal Attraction” actor told the Radio Times that the role of intimacy coordinators “feels like executives taking control away from filmmakers” on set.
“Sex scenes are like fight scenes, it’s all choreographed,” Douglas said in 2024. “In my experience, you take responsibility as the man to make sure the woman is comfortable, you talk it through. You say, ‘OK, I’m going to touch you here if that’s all right.’ It’s very slow but looks like it’s happening organically, which is hopefully what good acting looks like.”
He added, “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, [because] 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…”
