Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen open up about sex scenes and relationships in an interview with W Magazine for their new film Hemingway and Gellhorn.
The film charters the relationship between writer Ernest Hemingway and his mistress-turned-wife Martha Gellhorn. The pair originally met in a bar before falling in love and heading to the Mediterranean to report on the Spanish Civil War.
The relationship between the two characters was passionate to say the least, and the film includes a number of heated scenes.
When asked about them, heartthrob Clive Owen coolly replies:
"Sex scenes are only hard if there’s no narrative conveyed through the sex scene. In the Hemingway film, the sex scenes have a story going through them. It’s part of who these people are and what they are."
And Nicole Kidman has this to say:
“Maybe as I get older, and now having had a baby, it might be different, but I enjoy not letting my issues get in the way of a performance.
“Once I start putting all my little insecurities in my mind, I’m not actually acting.
"Then it’s about me - and it should never be about me. It should be about the character."
During their tumultuous relationship, Gellhorn famously asked Hemingway for divorce after five years of marriage and inspired his masterpiece To Whom The Bell Tolls.
Both Kidman and Owen's personal lives are less unstable than the one they depict. 44-year-old Kidman is married to singer Keith Urban and Owen has been married to his wife, Sarah-Jane Fenton, for 17 years, whom he met while touring in a Romeo and Juliet production.
Kidman has, however, proved an equally inspiring muse for her husband, with the country star penning the song Once in a Lifetime after he met the actress, and serenading her at their 2006 wedding with his version of the song Making Memories of Us.
See the full interview in the May issue of W Magazine, which hits newsstands on 24 April, and get a sneak peek of the images from their 1960's-inspired photoshoot below: