Furious jumping: why Henry Cavill is wrong to be cross with sex scenes

As Hollywood makes a return to full-throttle love scenes, the actor has got hot under the collar about excessive screen intimacy. But films from Oppenheimer to Poor Things show how good it can be

This has been a banner year for the sex scene. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in All of Us Strangers. Barry Keoghan and a freshly dug grave in Saltburn. Cillian Murphy, Florence Pugh and the Bhagavad-Gita in Oppenheimer. Emma Stone and the rest of the cast in Poor Things. Between them, these films have pushed the boundaries of what a cinematic sex scene can be. They’ve been tender, sad, passionate, thought-provoking, gruesome and excruciating in equal measure. But try telling that to Henry Cavill.

“I don’t understand them – I’m not a fan,” Cavill recently said of sex scenes during an interview on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I think there are circumstances where a sex scene actually is beneficial to a movie, rather than just the audience, but I think sometimes they’re overused these days.”