Why Mark Ruffalo was hesitant to film the sex scenes in Poor Things

Mark Ruffalo and Emma Stone from a scene in Poor Things, which won four Oscars awards this year.

PopBuzz, a pop-culture news portal, reveals that Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo has opened up about the divisive sex scenes in Poor Things, the film was nominated for 11 Oscars and won four Oscars earlier this month. Ruffalo said that he was initially hesitant to do them.

The three-time Oscar nominee Ruffalo gained international recognition for playing Bruce Banner / Hulk since 2012 in the superhero franchise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things tells the story of Bella Baxter, a woman who is brought back to life with the brain of a baby. At the start of the film, she's a grown woman resurrected with the brain of her unborn child. As she matures unnaturally quickly, her discovery of womanhood includes plenty of uninhibited sex — including with Ruffalo's Duncan Wedderburn, a lecherous lawyer. Bella, like a child unbeknownst to the ramifications of sexual transgressions, engages in multiple explicit sex acts which have faced backlash based on her mental age and how shocking some of them are. One scene was actually edited out of the UK version.

Now, Mark Ruffalo, 55, has revealed that he was worried about the sex scenes because he thought he was "too old" for them.

Emma Stone won her second Oscars award for Best Actress for the role of Bella from Poor Things (she had first won the said Oscars award for her role in La La Land in 2017). Speaking to Variety about their sex scenes, Ruffalo said: "I was like, ‘Do I have to?’ All I can hear is, ‘Nobody wants to see your old ass anymore. Maybe you shouldn’t be doing movies like that anymore’."

Separately, he told Perfect magazine: "I didn’t know if I could pull this off – I’ve never done anything like this before. And I’m 55 now, so, like, the sex scenes – am I too old to be doing that kind of stuff? Does anyone want to see that?"

As for the negative reaction to Bella's sex scenes, Mark said: "I feel like we’re in this prudish time for films. Sexuality is so deeply connected to the psychology of a character. And it should be explored in that sense, too."

Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Tony McNamara as their follow-up to The Favourite, is based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray.

Emma Stone also defended the sex scenes in a recent interview. She explained: "Bella is completely free and without shame about her body. So much of this was about being true to Bella's experience. [Sex] is obviously a huge part of her experience and her growth, as it is, I think, for most people in life."

She added: "I'm not a person that just wants to be naked all the time, but I am someone who wants to honour the character as fully as I possibly can. That's part of her journey."'

ALSO READ: What Emma Stone said about shooting the sex scenes in Poor Things