Jake Gyllenhaal says filming sex scenes with Jennifer Aniston was ‘torture’

Pair had to film intimate scenes together on the 2002 romance ‘The Good Girl’

Jake Gyllenhaal has described filming sex scenes with Jennifer Aniston as “torture” as he explained the difficulties actors face while trying to make a scene look realistic.

The pair starred together in the 2002 romance The Good Girl, playing two lovers who embark on an extramarital affair.

Gyllenhaal, who has previously revealed in interviews that he had a “crush” on the Friends star, spoke about filming The Good Girl’s sex scenes while on The Howard Stern Show.

“[Filming the sex scenes] was torture, yes it was,” Gyllenhaal said. “But it was also not torture. I mean, come on, it was like a mix of both.

“Weirdly, love scenes are awkward, because there are maybe 30, 50 people watching it? That doesn’t turn me on.” he continued.

The actor also described the process of shooting the scenes as “oddly mechanical”.

“It’s a dance, you’re choreographing for a camera,” he continued. “You can get in it, but it’s like a fight scene, you have to choreograph those scenes.”

Gyllenhaal revealed that the scenes were filmed using something he referred to as “the pillow technique”.

“The pillow technique was used,” he said. “That was just pre-emptive and used generally always when actually in a horizontal place in that movie.

“I think that was actually a Jennifer suggestion,” he added. “She was very kind to suggest it before we began. She was like, ‘I’m putting a pillow here.’”

Gyllenhaal’s latest film, an English-language remake of the 2018 Danish thriller The Guilty, can be watched on Netflix now.