Juliette Binoche believes that relying on intimacy coordinators on set can result in a 'bad situation' because actors may end up performing without genuine emotion. The 62-year-old actress acknowledges the importance of safeguarding performers, but she argues that actors must push beyond their comfort zones to make love scenes convincing.
Binoche's Views on Intimacy Coordination
Speaking to The Guardian, Binoche shared her perspective: 'I've been approached about that. The vocabulary is all: "Are you agreeing that he touches this?" The body becomes a puzzle... It's not as simple as having an intimacy coordinator on set. When you're in a love scene it needs to come from the heart, the guts, the need. And so if you're thinking of the movement you're going to do and not of the feeling, you're in a bad situation.'
She elaborated: 'When you're embodying lovers, you overcome some fears of touching bodies. You really have to go beyond your comfort zone because otherwise you become a prude and not truthful to what's happening in life.' However, the Chocolat star acknowledged that nude scenes are 'always difficult'. She noted: 'Each time you have to do nude scenes, it's always difficult. You have to focus on why you're doing them so you're not worried about them in a heavy way. It helps when you trust the director.'
Past Experience of Betrayal
Binoche learned this lesson the hard way when she discovered that director André Téchiné had broken promises regarding a nude scene in Alice and Martin. Without giving details, she said she 'felt betrayed' and ultimately persuaded producers to remove the footage. She has never worked with Téchiné again.
AI and the Film Industry
Elsewhere in the interview, the Staircase actress insisted she is not 'worried' about the impact of artificial intelligence on the film industry. This comes after Binoche passionately supported women filmmakers from the Arab world at a packed event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia last year.
Support for Arab Women Filmmakers
Speaking at the Red Sea International Film Festival, the French movie legend was visibly moved as rising Saudi director Shahad Ameen described the challenges of being accepted in the movie world. 'Go for it, baby!' Binoche told Shahad, who feared her vision was too 'weird' for mainstream audiences. Shahad's film Hejira is a moving story about two girls accompanying their grandmother on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Shahad, who admitted she was awestruck, warned against dismissing older generations' views. She described herself as a sports-loving tomboy and said her debut movie Scales was about a girl coming to terms with her own body. Binoche also shared her own struggle to 'change her body within six months' when she took a break from acting in 2007 to perform as a dancer alongside choreographer Akram Khan. She showed footage from those performances to Robert Redford, who urged her to make a film about it. Now, in 2025, the year Redford died, it is the subject of her directorial debut In-I In Motion.
