What is Pillow Technique? Jake Gyllenhaal reveals Jennifer Aniston's sex scene secret
Actor Jake Gyllenhaal has spilled the beans on what went down behind the scenes during the filming of his 2002 film 'The Good Girl'. Starring Jennifer Aniston as the female lead, the story revolved around two disaffected individuals from a small Texas town, who finds passion with each other. The movie had several intimate sex scenes taking place between the two actors. Well, what they did not know was that shooting a sex scene with Jennifer Aniston was nearly a "torture" for 'The Brokeback Mountain' actor.
In a recent conversation with Howard Stern on the Sirius XM show, Gyllenhaal also disclosed the secret "pillow technique" suggested by Aniston for smoothly filming an intimate scene, without any, err, bumps. "Yeah, the pillow technique was used. That was just preemptive, and used — generally, always — when actually in a horizontal place in that movie. Everything else is whatever it was. I remember those two characters did a lot of making out on like, boxes in the back room," recalled 'The Guilty' actor.
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Gyllenhaal, who was around 21 years of age at the time of shooting 'The Good Girl', was cast opposite 33-year-old Jennifer Aniston. As fate would have it, Aniston was his celebrity crush since childhood. He was already excited to meet his longtime crush in person, and anxious at the same time to be playing her romantic interest.
"It was torture… but it was also not torture," he joked about the situation. He further revealed how Aniston helped him ease during the sex scene by the 'pillow technique'. "I think that was actually a Jennifer suggestion. I think she was actually very kind to suggest it before we began… She was like, 'I'm putting a pillow here.' That was it, that was all she said," the 40-year-old actor shared.
Stern went ahead to dig more secrets out of him, as he asked if 'The Prestige' actor gave any warning to his co-star. "If you're feeling something, protrusion or whatever, I can't control this," Stern suggested as example. Gyllenhaal laughed off the idea and divulged the untold reality of sex scenes in films.
"Weirdly, love scenes are awkward because there are maybe 30, 50 people watching it. Maybe if you have a closed set, it's less. That doesn't turn me on. Most of the time, it's oddly mechanical, right?"
He further emphasized, "Yes, and also it's a dance. You're choreographing for a camera… It's one of those things — it's like a fight scene, you've got to choreograph those things, and I always have tried."
Meanwhile, Gyllenhaal's co-star Aniston has not made any comments in this regard. Directed by Miguel Arteta, 'The Good Girl' released on August 7, 2002, and made around $16.9 million at the box office.