The Oscar winner recently made an appearance on Amy Poehler’s podcast Good Hang, where the host put a question to her provided by Olivia’s The Roses co-star Benedict Cumberbatch.
“He asked a very sweet actor question,” Amy explained. “Basically, he is in awe of you and what you can do – [he wanted to know], is there anything you’re afraid of?”
“Anything where I have to show any skin, I don’t like that,” Olivia responded. “No thank you. Or pretending to have sex with someone, I don’t like it.”
She also claimed that simulated sex scenes make her feel “like I’m being unfaithful” to her husband of more than 20 years, Ed Sinclair.
“It just feels a bit ‘ugh’,” she continued. “Even when they go, ‘you can wear your jeans, and a cushion between you’. I don’t want to do that with someone I don’t know!”
“Thank god for intimacy co-ordinators!” she then enthused, revealing that leading intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien once gave her the advice that if an actor is required to pretend to have an orgasm, they should “imagine the sun is hitting your face”.
It’s understandable that Olivia might have reservations around on-screen nudity, as she has previously spoken about having her trust broken regarding how much of her body would be shown in the comedy Confetti, something she told The Guardian was the “worst experience of my life” during a 2011 interview.
A year later, she added to The Times: “A little piece of me died doing that, and a bit of me will never trust people again.”
Elsewhere in her Good Hang appearance, Olivia spoke lovingly about her husband, opening up about their first meeting in Cambridge, how he helped her with her speech before her win at the Oscars in 2020 and even being moved to tears when she spoke about him.
