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Sex scenes invariably involve somebody being made to feel highly uncomfortable. If it’s not one of the actors, then it’s definitely one of those poor fools who decided to watch an innocent fantasy flick with their parents, not realising that it would feature some pretty reckless bonking. During his appearance on the Adam Buxton Podcast, British actor Richard E. Grant was asked to discuss filming an embarrassing sex scene for Henry and June before listing three similar scenes that impacted his hormone-addled teenage self.

Loosely based on the erotic memoir by French novelist Anaïs Nin, Henry and June explores the literary love triangle between author Henry Miller, his wife June, and Anaïs Nin. On being introduced to Nin in Paris, she and June begin an affair. On returning to America, June gives Nin permission to sleep with her husband. The pair fall in love, and when June returns to France, the trio engages in a polyamorous relationship.

All the while, Nin’s husband, a successful banker called Ian Hugo, has been supporting his wife and Miller financially. The couple’s relationship provides Nin with much-needed stability, but she can’t help wanting more. Speaking to Adam Buxton, Grant discussed filming a sex scene as the unusually tolerant Hugo. “[Maria de Medeiros] was playing Anaïs Nin, and I was playing her husband, who was an American who famously had an enormous wanger, so I couldn’t understand why, if he did, their sex life wasn’t good enough for her.”

Grant went on to explain that he’d been “stark naked” for the scene. “The embarrassment is when you’re in a bed, and they say – we were shooting in Paris – ‘ooh can you just lift you’re left bum cheek to the left a little bit and then pump a little bit more like that?” he said. “It was pre the current situation where you have intimacy coaches, where everything is plotted and planned out and supervised. This was, you know, eight crew members in anoraks standing around while you have your kit off trying to look lusty in a bed.”

Buxton then asked Grant if there were any sex scenes that made a real impact when he was growing up. “I saw Women In Love, Ken Russell’s film, made in 1970,” he began. “I saw that in 1972 when I was in a hormonal teenage storm, so Alan Bates banging Jenny Linden in the mud was and remains an incredibly erotic image in my head. Then I saw A Clockwork Orange, which had a speeded-up-sex scene with Malcolm McDowell and two ladies that were very athletic”.

He concluded: “And then the one that remains the greatest sex scene that I’ve ever seen in a movie was Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie – who I was obsessed with – in Don’t Look Now because they were married people having sex. And it intercut between afterwards, when they were getting dressed, and then going back into the scene. I’ve never seen it done like that before or since, and I absolutely believed that they were madly in love and sexually charged by each other. I still think that it’s never been bettered.”

Set in Venice, Italy, Don’t Look Now follows John (Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Christie), a couple grieving the recent loss of their young daughter, who drowned in a tragic accident. While in Venice, John, a restorer of historical buildings, becomes involved in a restoration project at an ancient church, while Laura encounters a pair of elderly sisters, one of whom claims to be clairvoyant and communicates with the Baxters’ deceased daughter.

Sex scene discussion aside, Nicolas Roeg’s masterful direction and innovative editing techniques set him aside as an all-time great, with skills that undoubtedly contribute to the film’s sense of unease and disorientation. Through a series of fragmented flashbacks, dream sequences, and symbolic imagery, Don’t Look Now blurs the line between reality and hallucination, keeping viewers on edge and unsure of what is truly happening, establishing its presence as an undisputed cult classic.