Love in a cold studio, with the world and his wife looking on

How do you make passion look convincing with an entire film crew watching? SIMON CALLOWdescribes the tricky art of the love scene

IT MAY NOT strike you that love scenes have figured heavily in my curriculum vitae, but you would be wrong. I have tumbled with the best of them, and it has not always been easy. Partly, I suppose, the problem in my case has been to imitate heterosexuality convincingly. Am I getting it quite right? Is this what heterosexuals get up to in bed? But in truth, it’s always tricky, whatever your orientation.

Despite the massive growth in recent years of touchy-feeliness and kisses on all cheeks for the slightest acquaintance – and notwithstanding the supposed shamelessness of actors – extreme bodily intimacy remains a delicate issue. It is not a problem addressed by drama schools: as far as I am aware, there are no courses in Advanced Osculation, or Girl-on-Boy Body Surfing. When I was a student at the Drama Centre in 1970, emotional nakedness was the order of the day, even if, in the world outside, getting your kit off was more or less de rigueur, from Hairto Oh! Calcutta!to the Living Theatre's Frankenstein. But that was epic nudity; nudity as the exemplification of innocence and vulnerability. Love scenes are a different matter altogether.

There you are, face to face, in all your unadorned physicality, with neither drink, nor drug, nor meal, nor relaxing social ambience to blur things. The feeling is more morning-after than night-before. I had a scene in Shakespeare in Lovethat was particularly unlovely in that way. The character I played, Sir Edmund Tilney, is having a quickie when he is interrupted. It's a brief scene, but it needed to be urgent, animal, groiny. The schedule was behind. It looked like we weren't going to get to it, then suddenly it had to happen – now! The actress and I were hurtled through make-up. The shot list was simple, the action obvious – so much so that they were already discussing the next shot while we rehearsed. I was introduced to the actress, there was a brief discussion about how much would be exposed (my bum, her breasts) and how long it should last (30 seconds). The furniture was quickly adjusted and, like a couple of mating dogs, we leaped on each other, our orgasm hailed by the director shouting: "Cut!" Great satisfaction all round, hands shaken, off we went.

I never saw the actress again – and indeed, to my embarrassment, I can’t quite remember her face, let alone any other part of her anatomy. A typical one-night stand, in other words.

Passionate scenes like this do at least have their own momentum. Romantic encounters are a different matter. It needs a special kind of trust to express physical tenderness with a stranger.

Thirty years ago, I was in a BBC production of La Ronde, Schnitzler's famous play in which each character has sex with someone, then moves on to another person, who in turn moves on to someone else. So all the actors have two sex scenes. Mine were with the young Amanda Redman and that remarkable and distinguished actress Dorothy Tutin, then nearly 60.

I was naturally very relaxed about Amanda and very anxious about Dottie – the idea of embracing her seemed like lèse-majesté. But, in the event, it was Dottie who hurled herself at me with thrilling rapacity, while Amanda was rather shy. These differences are clearly visible in the finished product. Not that Amanda looks at all reserved, but it's technique. With Dottie, it was feeling.

Sex on radio is something else again. In the 1970s, Anna Calder-Marshall and I played lovers in a play by Fay Weldon: as soon as her husband left home, I slipped between his sheets. These were the days of “method radio”, so there was a bed, blankets and pillows. Anna and I clambered into the bed and set about puffing, grunting and lip-smacking, all the while trying to turn the pages of our scripts. The result was a cross between sumo wrestling and origami. The trick was not to catch each other’s eyes, or we would have collapsed.

Unfortunately, the scene was not just between the two of us: there was a dog, too, trained by the jealous husband to stop us from making love. The production couldn’t run to a real dog, but we had a barking Jack Russell on a separate speaker that was held by a rather tubby stage manager who attempted little jumping-up-and-down movements, scampering around the studio and running at us every time we essayed a little passion. We were crying with laughter as we squealed our lines, the hysteria quickly reaching orgasmic heights. The director leaped out of his booth to berate us, like schoolchildren. When we finally did the scene, the lovemaking was – how shall I put it? – tight-lipped.

Then there was the play I did, very early in my career, for Gay SweatShop, the experimental theatre company. It was a two-hander: a simple, romantic – but in those days, radical – tale of two young men who fall in love with each other, then drift apart. Inevitably, perhaps, a rather torrid off-stage romance developed. In the central scene, we were in bed together, naked. Then we had to get out of bed. Concealing the very obvious pleasure we took in each other’s proximity led to some rather baffling improvised choreography, involving cushions and hats.

Well, we were young. Nowadays, the problem is much more one of engendering arousal rather than of suppressing it. You’re doing this in front of other people, remember (director, camera crew, props, make-up, continuity), for other people – sometimes millions of other people – and it will be up there for all time, to be watched dozens, even hundreds of times on DVD. For some, that might in itself be a turn-on. But, like everything else in film – and, one is tempted to add, in life – it boils down to technique. It’s astonishing what can be done with smoke, mirrors and a little smart editing.

(– Guardianservice)