Secret Games
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book Nudity on Film: The Ultimate Guide to Working with Naked People. While my book focuses on teaching actors and directors, there are a few anecdotes here and there…..
My very first ever film was an erotic thriller entitled “Secret Games”. This may come as a shock, but the role involved… nudity visit
This is going to be something that makes every actor on the planet hate me but I got my first movie, on my first audition – and it was a SAG job so I got Taft-Hartley’d on my first job/audition. Now don’t hate on me too much. I’m not lucky. I spent a solid year studying before I ever went on that first audition.
My manager at the time was Robert Lombard. We talked about it and decided that, of course I want to take advantage of getting Taft-Hartley’ed on this one job, but that I would never get naked again. Never, ever. Ever. It was just this one time. I was going to do it this one time and get the things I needed to get and move on.
See how well that turned out?
I was very nervous on set. It was my first time on a movie set and I didn’t even know if they actually said “action” so I was just sorta winging it. It was a girl/girl love scene. Very tame. My character hires a prostitute for a first-time, lesbian tryst. So my awkward insecurity worked to my advantage! The actor that I was working with, Michelle Brin was a total sweetheart. Very kind and caring. She guided me through everything. We had to lay on our sides in the scene facing one another, kissing and she pointed out that I should lift my leg so that my pubic hair could not be seen. Not knowing “the rules” I dutifully bent my knee and prevented my pubic hair from showing.
Now, everybody’s anatomy is different and when I lifted my leg EVERYTHING else could be seen. I didn’t know this at the time!! I didn’t know how much of my nether regions could be seen on camera for about year and a half, maybe two years. I was at my parents house and they owned a video store so they had a copy of Secret Games. (Believe it or not, actors don’t always automatically get copies of their movies so I had never been given a copy of Secret Games.) My mom and I sat down to watch her little girl in a movie for the first time and there was ALL of her little girl. I had prepared her for nudity – but I couldn’t warn her about that. That was a fun day.
It turns out that Secret Games was not my last brush with nudity.