Your not a real fan… only one copy ! I’d buy at least three… 
If she does a porno I hope she makes a load of money out of it… it would be a great tendency to have mainstream actresses doing hardcore !
Worked for Barbara Hershey and David Carradine in “Boxcar Bertha.” No Oscars but an Emmy and a couple of Cannes Best Actress awards for her.
Yeah, but the penetration wasn’t shown, was it? According to the IMDb, the sex scene in question wasn’t simulated according to Barbara Hershey and David Carradine. Since IMDb can’t provide a definite answer as to whether or not the scene was real, I’d assume that penetration wasn’t shown. However, if there was any particular era of filmmmaking in which someone could have gotten away with showing actual sex in a mainstream film, it would have been the 1970s.
And is a scene wherein actual intercourse ocurred between the actors automatically “a porno” or not?
What if, for example, Nicole Kidman had intercourse with Tom Cruise during the filming of Eyes Wide Shut (or Far and Away, if you prefer, since I think at least portions of Eyes Wide Shut could be considered pornographic, myself). They were married at the time, remember. While I understand that filming sex scenes isn’t all that sexy, if I was filming with my husband, I might just say, “Fuck it” (pun intended) and have sex, trusting the director and editor to take care not to show the penetration. Seems easier than fussing with angles and G-strings to make it look like we’re having sex.
But, if we imagine for the moment that actual sex happened while filming, does that make it a porno? I don’t think so. I think porn is more about the intent: to get the viewer sexually aroused and encourage masturbation or intercourse.
My brother’s got a short film being shown at Sundance this year which features footage of he and his ex-girlfriend having sex. He’s into this art film scene where only “real” footage is used, but is then heavily edited to make a better story than real life. Is it pornographic? Made for some interesting discussions at Christmas, lemme tell ya!
Even if she did who would distribute it as a feature? What kind of play did the Brown Bunny get other than some big city arthouse and college theatres?
The closest thing I can think of re what you are talking about is when Mimi Rogers did “Full Body Massage” which was basically a virtually plotless excuse to have some guy spend the better part of an hour massaging her naked body with oil, herbs, and crystals, with lots of attention paid to her huge natural breasts and sweet behind. It’s scripted and acted very much like an artsy porno feature, but it’s mostly plotless and the performances are wooden.
It didn’t kill her career, but it didn’t boost it either.
Since you said Nicole Kidman was just a hypothetical, take a look at… Paris Hilton. Not nearly the stature of Nicole Kidman, but an honest-to-god amateur porno being all but aired on TV only made her career better.
*What career? That porn video is practically the only reason she is famous at all. Nicole Kidman, OTOH, is a well-known, respected actress with actual, you know, talent.
If it was done in a art-house, indie, good movie, I think it would generate some intriguing, controversial buzz and have little to no negative impact on her career. However, if she were in a standard crappy porn with just a lot of fucking, no way, career suicide.
I’d lose my job, spend all day in the theater, and develop dehabilitating carparal tunnel syndrome?
But like the phoenix from the ashes, a new career would arise.
What suprises me is that so few (any?) actress take that route. Sure, you may get a Playboy appearance, but I can’t think of any actresses that went to Vivid or something when their careers started tanking.
IIRC, that may be what got me wondering. The Hilton sex tape seems to have been good in terms of her career. But it was ostensibly a private tape and she had no acting career to begin with. I got to wondering what a sex tape would do to the career of a top Hollywood actress and I figured she’d be forgiven if the tape was supposed to be private. That got me wondering about a porno.
I’ve got about as much desire to see Nicole Kidman nude as I do of seeing Roseanne Barr’s stool sample. Why anyone thinks Nicole is hot is beyond me.
Yeah, but only about 17 people ever stayed in that film long enough to see the blowjob. Hell, half the audience even walked out at Cannes.
Pamela Anderson was certainly “forgiven” for the tape of her and Tommy Lee. It took a while, but she ended up with a stronger career post-scandal.
But I think someone stealing and airing a privately made tape (especially, in Pamela’s case, one made with your husband) would still be viewed differently from making the career choice to star in a chicken-choker when you had plenty of other roles open to you. The first can be forgiven, as it wasn’t really her fault the tape was stolen. The second? That’s a pretty conscious decision to share her naughty bits with the world.
Why does that surprise you? No matter how fond we each are personally of pornography, it still has a huge social and professional stigma. Granted a choice of roles, why do the one that’s going to force you into a career where you suddenly have very little choice of roles - just the same one, over and over, with different costumes? Most mainstream actresses started acting because they want to…well, act. And the level of acting on porn is somewhere below community theater. Not to mention the pay scale is nothing like what Kidman can command, and your co-stars aren’t nearly as hot!
As for stars going to Vivid when their careers start tanking, I think the ones we consider “stars” don’t need the money, and always hope for a mainstream comeback, so they don’t taint their resume with porn. The lower level ones do plenty of soft-core Skinemax stuff, which pays their bills and doesn’t automatically ruin their career chances at getting back into maintream cinema. (Mimi Rogers already mentioned, Jennifer Connelly was there for a while in the early '90s.)