Here's What It's Like Being a Sex Scene Stunt Double

Ever wonder what it’s like to knock boots with Brad Pitt or Lou Diamond Phillips (the latter, yes, many times)? Laura Grady’s done it…or at least she did it with their body doubles, during her long career of having sex as a stand-in.

Grady, who spoke to Vulture about her experiences, says that Marisa Tomei (Slums of Bevery Hills) was beautiful and that Brad Pitt (Fight Club) was very nice, but that the sex scene she did with his body double took two weeks. I both can and can’t imagine how tedious that must have been. Grady claims David Fincher is a genius, but pretending to have sex for days? Man, I can’t even do the real thing for more than ten minutes without needed a nap.

Fight Club (1999)

Helena Bonham Carter’s body double

“Fight Club was my favorite by far. It was just incredible. There was so much work on that set; it was literally two weeks of just these scenes in bed! You cannot be shy. There was also a body double for Brad Pitt, so we spent two weeks with David Fincher on a set and green-screen, just reenacting all of those sex scenes. I did see Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter throughout the day, but they were never in my scenes — the body doubles did their thing, and then Brad and Helena did their thing. So I never got to interact with Brad, unfortunately. David Fincher is just a master genius. He took so much time with us. He really, really cared about how we looked. And all those scenes — it was the most intricate sex scene I’ve ever done in my life. And it was pretty hard-core. We were all over each other, me and the body double. He wanted us to choreograph it, like a dance. He would come up with these phrases to give you ideas of what he wanted, like, ‘You’re in molasses,’ or ‘You’re in water, it’s streaming.’ And then when you see the movie, it’s just exactly that.”

You can read more about Grady’s experiences on Vulture, which might make you consider your own career in body-doubling (is that a verb?). Or not. Grady says she’s been painted naked and painted green before, which sounds mainly awful.