CAMERA READY
Some performers find their own ways to go with the flow ...
■ Maria Bello and Viggo Mortensen emerged with battle scars after their notorious coupling on a stairway in Canadian director David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. Bello said later she was emotionally comfortable doing the scene, but was definitely not physically comfortable. “We were on wooden stairs with no carpet. We thought it was no big deal … but the next day I was purple and blue and bruised. Viggo — the inside of his mouth was cut and his elbow was (swollen). So we had big laughs about that, but it wasn’t too hard because we were friends.”
■ Jada Pinkett Smith had no problem with her bedroom scenes in Ali, because they were with real-life husband Will Smith. “I had a good time,” she told reporters.
“And I didn’t have to worry about crew members saying to themselves ‘I wonder what Will would think of this!’” Furthermore, she didn’t get jealous about scenes in which Will — playing boxer Muhammad Ali — had to be in bed with other women. “Will,” she told him, “you have to be as sensual as you are with me.” Her verdict on seeing the finished film: Will “pulled it off.” ■ Jamie Lee Curtis was 42 when she was briefly photographed nude in The Tailor of Panama, awaiting the arrival of her character’s husband. During interviews, she became annoyed by reporters who kept assuming she must have suffered embarrassment. “It’s such a tiny little inconsequential moment,” she said. “It is a moment of domestic intimacy which is written in the script … it’s cool.” As for being embarrassed: “I’m a big girl. After all I’m in bed in the dark, and we’re going to have sex ... What was I going to be wearing? A truss? A nun’s habit?” Yes, she could have been in a negligee, but then “we would have had the whole thing of getting out of it, and quite frankly nudity seemed a more natural way of doing it.”