Kate Winslet has revealed that she "gifted a sex scene" to her co-star Saoirse Ronan for her birthday.
In a candid interview with Entertainment Weekly, the 45-year-old Academy Award-winning actress spoke about her upcoming movie Ammonite.
In the flick, Winslett portrays the 19th-century British paleontologist Mary Anning, who enters into a relationship with geologist Charlotte Murchison, played by Ronan.
Take a look at the trailer for Ammonite in the video below:
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Winslet stated that there is a sex scene between the two actresses at one point in the period drama and that she purposefully arranged for the intimate sequence to be shot on Ronan's birthday, as a "gift" for her.
Winslet stated:
"I just wanted her to have, frankly, a great memory in her film life, regardless of how the scene played out or the movie turned out.
"I knew that it would be [great] just because of the experience that we would share together. I knew that it would be very equal."
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The Titanic star continued:
"I just could feel that Saoirse and I had the same ideas in terms of what we wanted to express in the scene, the emotional underpinning of the scene, the connection between these two women – which is, of course, more important than anything in any love scene.
"We were on the same page in terms of that."
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Winslet also stated that she and Ronan choreographed the scene themselves without prior rehearsal or blocking and that only a small number of female crew members were present in the room during the filming, one of whom was pregnant at the time.
In addition, Winslet also stated that she tried to subvert the male gaze during the love scene, claiming that she believes most cinematic sex scenes are narratively informed by the male characters and not the female ones.
The biopic was written and directed by Francis Lee, with the scenes shot in chronological order in Dorset, to better conserve the emotional arcs of the two lead characters.
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In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on the movie, Lee himself stated: "I was fascinated to set this film in a period that was totally patriarchal... where women were completely owned by their fathers or their husbands.
"At that time, the medical profession believed that women had no sexual-pleasure organs. So, the idea of two women actually in a relationship together was just not a thought anybody ever had within society."
The film's premiere was delayed multiples times as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic but is currently scheduled to be released theatrically in the United States on November 13.