Why directors are hiring ‘intimacy experts’ for sex scenes

Actors used to turn to alcohol to numb nerves before filming explicit shots. Now Tinseltown has ‘intimacy co-ordinators’, writes Ed Power

When the hit TV series Game of Thrones arrived on our screens in 2011 it was with a thunderclap of bared bums and wobbly private parts. Inevitably most of those private parts belonged to women — typically younger actresses appearing in their first major television series.