Jennifer Lawrence shares why on-screen sex scenes are ‘easier’ with strangers

Jennifer Lawrence has made a surprising admission about filming on-screen sex scenes, saying she finds it “easier” to shoot them with co-stars she’s never met before.

Speaking Wednesday with Josh Horowitz at the 92nd Street Y, the Oscar-winning Silver Linings Playbook star revealed that on the first day of her latest film, Die My Love, she and co-star Robert Pattinson had to film a “naked sex tiger” scene, despite being complete strangers in real life.

“It was actually easier that way,” Lawrence clarified, per People magazine, “because Rob and I did not know each other. Which is kind of better, you know?” Explaining her logic, she said that having to share a kiss with a friend, as she did in The Hunger Games with Josh Hutcherson, was “weirder.”

“Imagine it,” she laughed. “So yeah, doing it with a stranger is preferable.”

Lawrence, 35, also noted that she typically gets “anxiety” before any movie, so immediately getting all of the awkward scenes out of the way eases her nerves when working with a new partner.

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Die My Love, from Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, follows Lawrence’s Grace, a new mother, whose husband, Jackson (Pattinson), helplessly watches her descend into postpartum depression, bordering on psychosis.

It features two main graphic sex scenes, including the “tiger” scene, in which Grace and Jackson are wrestling naked on the floor in an animalistic fashion.

“The day before our first day, Lynne showed Rob and I a scene from If,” Lawrence said in May at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, referring to Lindsay Anderson’s 1968 British classic starring Malcolm McDowell.

“It was these actors, and they’re attacking each other like tigers, and we were like, ‘OK, yeah,’ and she was like, ‘Can you do it naked, yeah?’ [imitating Ramsay’s Scottish accent]. We were like, ‘Oh, OK,’ and that was the first day on set.”

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Although Lawrence found the “tiger” scenes “very embarrassing,” she told Horowitz that they weren’t nearly as bad as “interpretive dance lessons.”

“We got to Calgary like three weeks before we started shooting. Rob and I both [are] embarrassed very easily, and that was mortifying. It was, I mean, I’m not...a dancer, Rob’s [the] worst dancer,” she added.

“And, and it was like, now blow like a tree — like it was just so embarrassing. So I think by the time she was like, ‘Yeah, get naked.’ We were just kind of like, ‘Okay, at least it’s not interpretive dance…’”

Lawrence’s raw performance in the psycho-drama is expected to earn her another Oscar nomination at this year’s ceremony. Last month, she landed a Golden Globe nomination for best female actor in a film – drama for her role. However, she missed out on a nomination for the 2026 Actors Awards, formerly the SAG Awards.