Most degrading or humiliating scene for an actress/actor

She had no choice. The Academy always has the option of buying back an Oscar for the princely sum of one dollar, if someone tries to sell it. Although this option wasn’t valid at the time Orson won his Oscar, they were still able to use it. Therefore, she lost the Oscar for a buck.

Haven’t seen it, but I thought the general consensus was that Sevigny wasn’t faking it in Brown Bunny. And I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that everyone shares your sexual mores. I’d personally draw the line at performing an actual sex act on camera: for one thing, the film cartridge keeps poking me in the back. <rimshot> Ahem. Sorry. I’d personally draw the line at performing an actual sex act on camera, but a simulated sex act? Who cares? If I pretend to kill someone in a movie, I don’t worry about people I know seeing and thinking I’m a real murderer. No offence, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like you’re operating from the assumption that sex is always “dirty” to some degree, and being seen having even pretend sex must be embarassing. A lot of people don’t feel the same way about it, and most of them probably live in Hollywood.

Has anyone mentioned the 10-minute rape scene in “Irreversible”? By far the most disturbing thing I’ve yet to see on film. Also the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but not because of that.

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0290673

My point was a little more complex than that. If I see Chloe Sevigny giving some guy a blowjob in a movie, I tend to assume she’s doing it because she’s an actress, not because she is a generic person who gives guys blowjobs for money. I will not be offering her $50 in exchange for oral sex next time I see her.

John Wayne … Susan Lucci … etc …

Yes, some people confuse actors with their roles alrighty. They generally are not considered the most sophisticated elements of fandom, to put it mildly. And I would suggest that the subject of this thread constitutes a species of that activity, though it’s a much more subtle species of mistaking illusion for reality than is usually the case.

Email sent. Sorry. :frowning:

Point taken, but given the situation of a man getting anally raped in front of his friends by the dirty, stinking backwoods fellow, while be forced to “squeel like a pig” given the time it was filmed and the incessant jokes and unfortunate single note highlight to his career to me makes it by far the “winner”.

No matter what he has done “squeel like a pig” is the first thing that comes to mind when Ned Beatty is mentioned.

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Beatty,+Ned

120+ appearances in films and TV, and is he remembered for that scene. Pretty humiliating if you ask me.

Belle de Jour in its entirety. http://us.imdb.com/Title?0061395

Interestingly, Monica Bellucci — who played the victim of the rape — directed that scene herself. The director of the film told her more or less what he wanted, and let her take a camera and a couple of technicians off to shoot it. As I understand it, she did two and possibly three takes, because she didn’t think the first one was brutal and nasty enough. I would argue that it isn’t degrading if, as an artist, you have control over your own choices.

I’m surprised nobody’s commented on my “background stripper in a Michael Bay movie” example above. As an actor myself, I think it’s much more emotionally abusive, and therefore humiliating and degrading, to treat somebody as a piece of disposable, manipulable meat than it is to respect an actor’s craft while sensitively guiding them to do something difficult.

Hey Sampiro, ease up on Bela Lugosi. He was a morphine addict due to being in terrible physical pain for the last few years of his life. He was perhaps not the most fiscally responsible actor of his day, but few of them are.

I really didn’t like seeing the young boy raped in The Prince of Tides. Yuck-O.

Quoth Sampiro:

Does anyone else see the irony in this? I presume that one of the “most successful trilogies of all time” you’re referring to there is Star Wars, the very same series that Guiness was reluctant to be in.

That’s an interesting point. I would point out, though, that not a single artist we’ve thus talked about was ‘forced’ to do any of these movies. They all had the choice to do it or not. They read the script beforehand and knew what scenes they were going to have to do for the film. So in that sense, they all have ‘control over their choices.’ Is the answer to the OP’s question what film has a degrading scene that differs most from that depicted in the script the actors read?

Come to think of it, though, being in that horrible Matrix: Reloaded movie [Bellucci played ‘Persephone’] is objectively more degrading than being anally raped for 10 minutes on screen in Irreversible. They were both horrible movies, in fact Irreversible was worse, but at least something different and memorable (albeit in a disturbing way) happened in Irreversible. Can’t say the same about Matrix2.

Yeap, yeap.

I’m willing to be degraded playing some role in any Matrix sequel. Please, Wachowsky Bros., degrade me! :cool:

I’m correcting you. I have sexual mores, but I’m not a moralist and don’t think sex is dirty nor embarrasing in any level.

I don’t consider all movies do it bad; let’s say, Basic Instinct, whose sexual scenes are very fair and justified. But I said before that Hollow Man lacks of this distinction.

And I’m not talking about sexual embarrassment. Even the most decent wife may do a fellatio but she doesn’t need to tout it, nor the husband. Don’t misunderstand me. I am open-minded, I agree mainstream actresses and actors must be open-minded, but I don’t think any of them would like people think they’ve done a porno clip. They wouldn’t like her open-minded scene to be freely circulating in the internet.

Not even Traci Lords.

Read the book. Not only better than the movie, but the pay-off / justice / revenge for that is much more… Brutal? Satisfying if you like brutal?

But have you asked Beatty? That scene made his career as a known and respected A-list character actor. It turned him from a “Hey, it’s that guy!” to a household name. And he’s hardly been typecast as a rape victim. Plus it was a scene that took a lot of courage to make at the time. I imagine Ned is proud of that work, as he should be.

I suppose that Kim Basinger would pick the movie she refused to make- Boxing Helena. She was willing to fight a lawsuit rather than play the part after backing out when she saw the shooting script.

"She had no choice. The Academy always has the option of buying back an Oscar for the princely sum of one dollar, if someone tries to sell it. "

I really question the enforceability of that “option.” Also, after they give you the statuette, what if you refuse to sign the option? If it were me, I’d get my lawyer to negotiate a “fair market value, right of first refusal” clause, and see the Academy try to revoke the Oscar.

Um, was that post supposed to be in another thread? Or did I miss something?

FYI, I think that clause is a UL. Oscars are sold frequently, without the Academy getting a shot at them first.

(end hijack!)

They make all the nominees sign well before the ceremony. If you don’t sign, you don’t get the statue. No one needs to revoke anything because refusing to sign means you’ll never have the statue in the first place. Simple as that.

Incidentally, this came up in another thread – Welles’ Oscar predated the $1 buyback agreement, so she could’ve sold it, but Welles’ original Oscar was misplaced. To get a replacement, the Acadamy required Welles to sign a buyback agreement that included both the replacement Oscar and the original Oscar in the event it was later found (and it was, IIRC).

The Academy didn’t start using the buyback clause until the early fifties. Oscars presented before then can be bought and sold. In that other thread, someone noted that Kevin Spacey and Steven Speilberg have amassed a pretty formidable collection of pre-agreement awards.