That said, though, there's also a whiff of unfairness in the argument that if a woman with an "imperfect" body (Kathy Bates, for instance, in "At Play in the Fields of the Lord") does a nude scene, it's laudable as art, an actress performing her craft, a different thing altogether from, say, Sharon Stone's sly (and, in some scenes, completely nude) performance in "Basic Instinct." Stone is one actress who did nude scenes earlier in her career but who now refuses -- understandable, considering that "Basic Instinct" turned her into a marked woman. But why should actresses -- young, relatively inexperienced ones as well as those who are more seasoned -- be made to feel that the decision to strip down will weigh heavily on their image? That's a sure way to turn the question "To bare or not?" into one that plays right into Hollywood's (and movie audience's) prudery, dragging the focus away from the more important question of whether or not the actors are effective in the scene.

The dividing line between those who will and won't do nudity ends up creating a kind of pecking order among actresses. The unspoken understanding is that it's only the low-rent actresses, and the desperate newcomers, who take their clothes off. Once an actress has achieved a certain amount of cachet, she's much better off keeping every stitch on. I could hardly believe it when I learned that Charlize Theron -- an actress who'd received positive notices from a number of critics for her role in "Devil's Advocate" and who had enough of a buzz on her to land a spot on the cover of the terminally hype-conscious InStyle magazine -- had been featured in a nude spread in the May Playboy. It seemed to be an unprecedented move -- and a brave one -- for a young actress who'd already gained some notoriety. The perception that all hot young Hollywood actresses are willing and eager to take it all off to jump-start their careers is simply a fallacy. Very few actresses with healthy careers (Drew Barrymore is the one exception who springs to mind) are willing to bare it all in a magazine; it's the actresses desperately trying to resuscitate their livelihood (for instance, Judy Norton, who played Mary Ellen on "The Waltons" and later -- much later -- appeared in Playboy) that you see doing nude spreads.

The Theron pictures in Playboy were so tasteful and inoffensive -- some of them rendered in satiny black and white, focusing as much on her magnificent legs as on her breasts (I've seen racier-looking photographs in ads for women's shaving cream) -- that it would be easy enough to believe that the actress had posed for them specifically for Playboy. But if you read the magazine's contributors section, you learn that the photographs were taken during Theron's "days as a model." What looked like an unprecedented move -- a bold choice, a chance for an actress to prove she has no problem admitting that her sexuality is just one of any number of appealing things about her -- was probably just another instance of "recently discovered" nude pix. I was disappointed.

There's something dispiriting about the way an actress's willingness (or not) to go nude denotes her place in the hierarchy of her peers. In a ménage à trois scene in last year's "Wild Things" -- a hugely enjoyable movie, and an example of good, trashy fun that's also intelligent, uninhibited and witty -- relative newcomer Denise Richards exposes her breasts, while Neve Campbell, clothed chastely in a black tank top, gets to pour champagne on them. (In the middle of all this, Matt Dillon does the stock thing that every guy in a ménage à trois scene does: shows how he's barely able to contain his good fortune.) When Campbell finally does remove her shirt, she's shot from the back.

To be fair to Campbell, she does engage in a lengthy lesbian kiss on-screen, and she doesn't shrink away from her character's nastiness. In other words, she takes a fair amount of risk for being such a well-known actress. But while I like both actresses' performances in the movie, I give Richards extra points for her chutzpah. Nude scenes are extremely difficult for actors, presenting a special set of challenges to their skill and professionalism. (Not to mention that many actors are likely to feel the same shyness that most of us mere mortals feel about showing off our bodies.) Actors and actresses often claim they choose not to do nude scenes for personal reasons. But it's clear their reasons are tied to more outside factors than they'd care to admit: They may wonder whether they'll get cast again, or whether they'll be expected to take their clothes off every time. They may wonder whether they'll be remembered for their acting in a specific scene or simply for the fact that they appeared nude in it (an issue that Julianne Moore, an actress with an extraordinarily broad range, is probably all too aware of after her "bottomless" scene in Robert Altman's "Short Cuts"). And no actor -- least of all a woman -- wants to be branded as cheap. It's the "respectable" actors who are honored with Oscars.

Yet there are a few small rays of hope. Nicole Kidman, an actress who has enough clout to set her own terms, attracted a certain amount of attention for her willingness to appear nude onstage (if only facing away from the audience) in "The Blue Room." And when I saw "Shakespeare in Love" last year, I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Gwyneth Paltrow's breasts, in her big love scene with Joseph Fiennes. I've since looked at the scene again and noticed how easily the shots could have been reframed to keep those breasts safely out of sight. There's no question that they represent a conscientious choice, both on the part of director John Madden and of Paltrow. An actress with the visibility and critical acclaim that Paltrow had, even before her Oscar nomination and win, doesn't need to show anything she doesn't want to. And especially for someone like Paltrow -- who, among the public, seems to be more frequently maligned for her privileged upbringing and patrician good looks than she is evaluated as an actual actress -- that single flash of skin represents a small act of bravery. Of the current crop of actresses, she's probably the last one I'd have expected to reveal so much of herself.

But she did, and now she's got her Oscar as well. Of course, the people who claim that actresses are baring themselves all over Hollywood are never going to believe that she's done anything unusual at all. They're too busy complaining about having to suffer the naked breasts of Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan in movies that somehow none of the rest of us have seen. In the mainstream movies that most of us see, though, the ridiculously and artfully draped sheet is still the order of the day. That's the way it is in the movies, exactly like that.
salon.com | April 26, 1999

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