Rob Lowe Says It's 'Brave' and 'Unusual' to Have Sex Scenes in Movies Now but 'in Our Day It Was Required'

Mar. 15, 2025

Photo:Amy Sussman/WireImage

Rob Lowe attends the 2024 ESPY Awards at Dolby Theatre on July 11, 2024 in Hollywood, California.

Amy Sussman/WireImage

Rob Lowethinks movies are pretty unsexy right now.

Lowe, 60, got candid withKristin Davison the Thursday, Feb. 27 episode of his"Literally!" podcast, as the two discussed the decrease in sex scenes in movies.

“Kim Cattralland I did a movie calledMasqueradetogether, which, I love that movie,” he told Davis, also 60, who voiced her love for the film too. “It got good reviews, but the studio kind of dumped it because they thought it was too sexy. It was pretty gratuitous, but it was great.”

“It was sexy!” theDeadly Illusionsactress said. “I wish we had sexy movies now!”

Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson in Babygirl

Niko Tavernise

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However, theSt. Elmo’s Fireactor didn’t agree with the notion that Kidman, or other actors who take on sex scenes today, are “brave” for doing so.

“They’re like, ‘Oh, it’s so brave. She’s so brave,'” Lowe said on the podcast. “She’s brave because she has a sex scene. That’s brave now. And, in our day, it was required. There’s the page 73 rule… In the day, the sex scene was always on page 73.”

“You get a script and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, how gratuitous. Do I have to be naked in this? Let me check.’ And you didn’t have to read the whole script. You just went to page 73 because that mid–second act, what do you do in the second act, which is notoriously the toughest sledding in storytelling? I know. TheyBlue Lagoonit. Beach under a moonlit night,” Lowe continued. “But now it’s brave.”

“I’ve always been on a quest as an actor, I’m always going, ‘Where have I not been? And what can I explore as a human being?’ And this was an area I’d never been,” Kidman told the audience.

“There’s a sort of a jump off the cliff thing where you go, okay, I’m just going to abandon everything and explore this with the people that I trust in a genre that is already set, but hopefully we can explore new territory and especially with the female at the helm,” she added.

source: people.com