When Greta Scacchi bared all

Greta Scacchi hated getting naked for the movies, says Elizabeth Grice in the London Daily Telegraph. Now 48, the actress came to public attention in 1983 in the Merchant-Ivory film Heat and Dust—in part because of a memorable nude scene. When Scacchi bared her breasts in White Mischief four years later, directors and audiences assumed she didn’t mind peeling down on camera. But the notoriety rankled. “To be offered work because people liked my photograph was insulting,” Scacchi says. “I got pigeonholed for taking my clothes off. I don’t think I was doing it more than others; maybe I was just more memorable.” Finally, in 1992, when Robert Altman cast her in The Player, she said, “I cannot once again play the part of the blonde sex bomb who’s going to take her clothes off.” Altman initially agreed, but when filming began he demanded, “You get your ass on that set, take your knickers off, and do what you’re paid to do.” In the end, she insisted that the sex scene show her only from the neck up, and that’s how Altman shot it, “in an atmosphere of complete tension.” At age 32, she had a baby, and her nudity problem disappeared. “Nobody ever asked me to take my clothes off again. It was a relief.”

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