Viggo Mortensen Caught Backlash for His Love Scene With Gwyneth Paltrow After She Was With Ben Affleck
Gwyneth Paltrow is used to doing love scenes in films. But her A Perfect Murder co-star Viggo Mortensen took certain unexpected liberties with their love scene to put Paltrow at ease. Unfortunately for Mortensen, however, a few suspected that this love scene had a negative impact on Paltrow’s relationship with Affleck.
Viggo Mortensen’s love scene with Gwyneth Paltrow led to rumors of an affair
Mortensen and Paltrow worked together for the first time in the 1998 drama A Perfect Murder. The feature focused on an affair Paltrow was having with Mortensen’s character, which ignited rumors about their hypothetical affair in real life. Details that Mortensen spilled about their sex scene, like singing for Paltrow off script, only fueled the gossip.
“What was true is that before we took our clothes off and climbed between the sheets, I would serenade Gwyneth with Spanish love songs to get her in the mood and to soothe her,” Mortensen once said according to Brego.
Unlike other actors, Mortensen also confided that he enjoyed his love scenes with Paltrow, albeit there was still some discomfort between them.
“It’s always a little weird when you have to take off your clothes and do a love scene with someone you don’t know. In this case it was weird, but fun. And any actor who says they feel uncomfortable doing those scenes, well, that’s bulls***,” he said.
At first, Mortensen thought the rumors that circulated about a fling with Paltrow were funny. But they stopped being funny after the intensity of the backlash grew.
“My phone never stopped ringing with press people asking me why I’d seduced Gwyneth. They were confused with the movie,” he said.
He’d even received some terrible letters from supporters of Paltrow’s relationship with Ben Affleck, who accused Mortensen of breaking them up.
“I was bombarded with hate mail by people who said I’d stolen Gwyneth from Ben,” he said.
Gwyneth Paltrow didn’t expect to spend the rest of her life with Ben Affleck
Of course, it was later revealed that Mortensen had nothing to do with Paltrow and Affleck’s relationship ending. Paltrow once hinted that their separation was a complex one with many variables in the equation.
”Ben makes life tough for himself,” she once told Entertainment Weekly. ”He’s got a lot of complication, and you know, he really is a great guy. So I hope he sorts himself out.”
According to the publication, Paltrow asserted that she didn’t really see her and Affleck going the distance, anyway. But she didn’t regret her time with the Daredevil star. She felt dating Affleck was more of an educational experience that helped her growth.
“I think there’s certain boyfriends where you are trying to work stuff out, right? Like, you’re trying to heal certain stuff from your childhood, and he was very much a lesson in that way. I’m not sure exactly what I was trying to heal in that instance, but it was…he was, you know, it was specific,” she once said on The Howard Stern Show (via W Magazine).
Viggo Mortensen felt his love scenes with Gwyneth Paltrow were just as great as his love scenes with Christopher Walken
Eventually, the rumors between Mortensen and Paltrow seemed so convincing that they reached The Road star’s family. Mortensen’s own relatives started celebrating his relationship with Paltrow, reassuring the actor Paltrow was a good match.
“They called to say that they were happy for me and said Gwyneth was such a snappy dresser and had such style that they hoped it would rub off and make me pay more attention to my clothes,” he said.
Mortensen was still confused as to why his steamy love scene with Paltrow caused so much ruckus. He quipped he had an equally intense love scene with veteran actor Christopher Walken, which didn’t generate the same amount of conversation.
“I had a great sex scene with Christopher Walken in The Prophesy and no one started rumours about us. When will people realize that actors act? If we didn’t make love scenes believable, we wouldn’t be doing our job properly,” he said according to Brego.
