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Overview of
our 16th annual list:
The
most dramatic and surprising development of 2014 was
not the scene that won, although that was
awe-inspiring, but the scene it beat out. Suppose
you knew a couple of years ago that Scarlett
Johansson would do a completely nude role with
several minutes of naked running time and no body
doubles, no bad lighting, no CGI, and no other film
tricks designed to obscure her private parts. What
odds would you have given that such a scene would be
chosen as the best and most popular of the year?
Astronomical, right? How could anything beat that?
Well, something did. The gorgeous Alexandra
Daddario, possessing a haunting pair of eyes and a
flawlessly sexy body, took off her clothing and
exposed every square inch of that flesh in an
episode of True Detective. In the process, she
managed to relegate the voluptuous Johansson to
second place. Bravo, Alexandra! But where can you go
from here?
It
was refreshing to see so many excellent nude scenes
in respected movies. Last year's group came mostly
from TV shows, B-films and a music video, but the
current crop comes mostly from theatrical releases.
Ten of the top thirteen finishers appeared in
movies, and not one of those ten films was rated
below 6.2 at IMDb. Several of them are considered
either Oscar contenders or art house masterpieces.
The three TV scenes in that sweet thirteen are no
slouches, either. The two highest-ranked TV scenes
were in True Detective and Game of Thrones, arguably
the two best premium cable shows of the year.
======
I kept the list at 25 scenes this
year, because: (1) it was a natural break point in the
balloting; (2) hey, it's five more scenes to look at,
and nobody's going to object to that.
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| 25 |
Alison Sudol in "Transparent"
season one
Many years ago, Alison acted under
the name of Alison Monro. Today, 30-year-old Alison
Sudol, aka A Fine Frenzy, is not really an actress at
all. She's a singer-songwriter, pianist, and
environmental advocate, and is writing a
Narnia-inspired children's book in her spare time.
She did this scene in the pilot for Transparent, and
she appeared (clothed) in some other episodes, but
it's not clear whether she'll pursue any serious
resumption of her acting career at this point.
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| 24 |
Cameron Diaz
in Sex Tape
5.1 at IMDb,
18% positive reviews
Cameron Diaz bared her breasts in a
cheap, sleazy, almost homemade film when she was a
young woman, and that has been well traveled through
the internet, but she has not really done any nudity
in "official" films. There are two or three films
where her nipple has appeared in a downblouse or
something similar, but this role, lensed when she was
in her 40s, was the first time we've seen her butt.
She certainly had no reason to keep it hidden. There
are not many women in their 40s whose butts would look
better than that!
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| 23 |
Charlotte
Gainsbourg in Nymphomaniac
7.1 at IMDb,
75% positive reviews
I will be honest and say that I
would have cast my own vote for this performance if
everything had been real, despite the fact that I am
no real fan of 43-year-old Charlotte Gainsbourg. The
performance appears to go beyond what any other
established actress has ever done on screen. For
example, Gainsbourg seems to do a double penetration
scene with her face clearly in the shot.
Unfortunately, everything was not real. The nastiest
scenes were completed by using CGI, prosthetics, and
body doubles.
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| 22 |
Elizabeth
Olsen in Oldboy
5.7 at IMDb,
42% positive reviews
The ranking of this scene suffered
because the film was a tweener. It was released around
Thanksgiving time in 2013, but Elizabeth's nude scenes
were not familiar to our voters until after last
year's balloting. By the time this year's balloting
rolled around, the film had more or less disappeared
from our immediate recall.
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| 21 |
Trieste Kelly
Dunn in "Banshee"
season two
In 2010 she was
named one of the "25 New Faces Independent Film" by
Filmmaker Magazine, despite the fact that she was 29
years old and her acting credits dated back to the
mid-90s.
And Rodney Dangerfield thought HE got no respect.
One thing is certain - people recognize her now,
although mostly clad in a police uniform.
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| 20 |
Lizzy Caplan in "Masters of Sex"
season two
Lizzy also
made last year's list (sixth place) for her nude
performances in season one. The drop in rank is
simply because the novelty has worn off. Neither
Lizzy's beauty nor the quality of her nudity has
diminished.
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| 19 |
Britt Robertson in Ask Me
Anything
6.0 at IMDb, 50% at Rotten
Tomatoes
There were
rumors that the Disney folks were not
pleased with Britt's decision to appear in this film
as a promiscuous blogger. Ya see, Britt will co-star
with George Clooney in Disney's big-budget
Tomorrowland, which will be released to kick off the
summer blockbuster season in May of 2015, and the
Mouse-house supposedly didn't think that Britt needed
to dilute a career break like that by starring in a
raunchy indie film. (Both Disney and Britt's people
are denying the rumor, but the director of Ask Me
Anything is finding Britt unresponsive to calls for
help with promotion.)
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| 18 |
Keri
Russell in "The Americans"
season two
Keri doesn't have a
lot of meat on her bones, but what she does have is
A-1 prime. And damned if she doesn't do some dark,
kinky stuff on this show for a Mouseketeer!
This role is a real outlier from the predicted path of
her career nudity arc. She turned 18 some twenty years
ago, and in all that time had never exposed her butt,
and had only exposed one breast from the side for a
split second back in 1997.
I, for one, applaud her change of heart.
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| 17 |
Ellin
Dorrit Petersen in Blind
7.2 at IMDb,
100% positive reviews
This dramedy has been
universally praised by critics as a taut, compact
masterpiece. Although Ellen is 39 and has few film
credits at IMDb (none at all in the period before her
33rd birthday, when she seems to have acted
exclusively on stage), she has received rave reviews
for her performance as a woman who loses her sight
abruptly because of some unspecified condition.
I'll add a thumb up for the frontal nudity as well.
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| 16 |
Olivia Wilde in
Third Person
6.4 at IMDb, 23%
positive reviews
Olivia has not done
much additional nudity since her naked debut in Alpha
Dog back in 2006, and none at all in proper lighting.
She did a dimly lit topless scene in Deadfall, flashed
an ever-so-brief nighttime peek at her butt in Cowboys
and Aliens, and took a dark nighttime skinny dip in
Drinking Buddies.
It's good to see her back in the light again!
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| 15 |
Olivia Cheng in
"Marco Polo"
season one
You would think that a
full-frontal and rear nude appearance from a lovely
woman in a much-ballyhooed big-budget Netflix
spectacular would rate higher than 15th place.
Why didn't it? Well, for one thing, the series was a
dud; for another, Olivia has no curves and in some
shots she seemed to be ... well ... older than
expected. Her age seems to be a secret guarded more
closely than Fort Knox or the Crown Jewels, but
whatever the correct number is, it's not an especially
low one.
Having noted all that, I must note that the particular
scene in the clip, involving naked martial arts, is
one of the best damned nude scenes ever!
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| 14 |
Lola
Naymark in Au Fil d'Ariane
5.8 at IMDb,
100% positive reviews
I don't know a damned thing about
this obscure movie. I'm not the only one in that
predicament. As I type these words, there is only one
review at Rotten Tomatoes and there are a mere 66
votes at IMDb. But I did see the film clips, so I have
no quarrel with the ranking.
I do know from Charlie's French Cinema Nudity
site that the freckled actress has been naked in many
earlier films, dating back to 2006: a breast in Faux
Coupable; a breast in La Promeneuse d' Oiseaux; a
breast in Comme un Mauvais Souvenir; both breasts in
Dans Tes Bras; and the full monty in L'Armee du Crime
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| 13 |
Eva Green in
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
6.7 at IMDb, 44%
positive reviews
I would say that Eva is the
unquestioned queen of screen nudity in the 21st
century.
I chose her work in The Dreamers (early 2003, when she
was a spectacular 22) as the best nude performance of
the millennium, and she continues to try to top it
year after year, although she's now in her mid 30s.
This year alone, she had three nude performances on
the nomination list: this one, Penny Dreadful, and the
300 sequel.
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12
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Maaike
Neuville in
Goltzius and the Pelican Company
6.8 at IMDb, 75%
positive reviews
I have always been
racked with ambivalence about Peter Greenaway's films.
They are always artistic and meticulously
storyboarded. Just about any frame could be blown up
and hung in an art museum. They are also obsessive,
pretentious, and frequently boring.
One thing I must give the guy without reservation:
nobody, but nobody, shoots better nude scenes: there
is always explicit exposure, almost always performed
by gorgeous women (yes, and men), and the setting is
always in an impeccable composition of dazzling
artistry (and usually symmetry, for that is one of his
many obsessions).
Since Charlotte Gainsbourg's scene was basically fake,
I cast my own personal ballot for Neuville. It's a
gorgeous scene, and she's only one of many beautiful
women who appear in this film as naked as they were
born.
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| 11 |
Katherine Waterston
in Inherent Vice
7.8 at IMDb, 71%
positive reviews
Waterston got completely naked for
P.T. Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's
offbeat, non-linear novel.
This performance might have fared
better in the voting if good pictures had been
available by the time of the election. The choices
of the voters are not easy to predict (I certainly
would not have guessed #3 correctly), but If you
scan the next few items on the list, you'll see
that this scene probably should have finished
somewhere around #7.
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| 10 |
Reese
Witherspoon in Wild
7.5 at IMDb, 92%
positive reviews
Reese Witherspoon is a
major star at 38, and she hasn't done any screen
nudity since 1998's Twilight, when she stepped in
front of the camera topless at age 21 or 22. That's a
long time for a prolific actress (some 25 films
between Twilight and Wild) to dodge the nudity bullet,
but she finally took the plunge, and it seems to me
that she looks just about as good as ever, even though
her nude scenes are just brief glimpses in flashback
memories.
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9
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Jessica Chastain in
Salome / Wilde Salome
7.3 at IMDb, 80%
positive reviews
Jessica is truly a beautiful woman
and she really threw herself into this scene with
exuberance and passion, but the scene, as erotic as it
is, almost seems like a disappointment compared to the
hype that preceded it. We've been waiting for it for
years. Jessica Chastain was 29 when filming began, but
37 when rights were finally released to VOD.
Al Pacino started filming in 2006 in Ireland, and
wrapped principal photography in 2008, so people had
been talking about it for eight years before it saw
the light of day in 2014, except for a screening at
the Venice Festival in 2011, when the buzz around
Jessica's topless dance began in earnest.
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8
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Shailene Woodley in White
Bird in a Blizzard
6.6 at IMDb, 48%
positive reviews
This is a cute scene, but doesn't
seem like one that would rate a top ten finish. Its
success with voters derived from the fact that
Shailene grew up before our eyes in The Secret Life of
the American Teenager, and then reached box office
stardom in 2014.
She was probably the breakout star of
2014 in terms of financial performance. Divergent was
a hit, grossing $150 million in the U.S. and another
$140 million elsewhere. A short time later, Woodley
starred in a surprise hit, The Fault in Our Stars,
which took in $120 million domestically and $180
million overseas - on a budget of only $12 million.
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Emily
Ratajkowski in Gone Girl
8.3 at IMDb, 88%
positive reviews
This is the second
consecutive year in the top ten for the model/actress
with a spectacular chest. That's impressive for a
woman who was essentially a model and rarely gets any
significant screen time.
She was in second place last year for her nude
appearance in a Robin Thicke music video.
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6
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Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street
8.3 at IMDb, 77% positive
reviews
This is another one of the
tween-year entries that probably would have finished
even higher if it had clearly belonged to either year
(I think Margot would have finished second last year,
possibly even first, if the scene had been available
before the voting.) The film was a Christmas,
2013 release, but the nude scenes were not seen by our
voters in time for the balloting. By the time the 2014
balloting came around, many people had other scenes on
their minds. The very fact that this scene finished as
high as sixth is a tribute to the beauty and daring of
Margot in getting totally naked before Scorsese's
lens.
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5
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Stacy Martin in
Nymphomaniac
7.1 at IMDb, 75%
positive reviews
I suppose this would have been the
nude performance of the year if it had been delivered
by somebody familiar to the voters before the film was
released, and if everything on screen had really been
part of Stacy's body. Unfortunately, neither condition
was met. Stacy was completely unknown before she was
cast in this film, and her performance involved "a
porn double and a prosthetic vagina." But even the
parts that were real were good enough to merit a
powerhouse fifth-place finish in her screen debut.
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4
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Lili
Simmons in "Banshee"
season two
She finished 16th on the list last
year, for her work in season one!
She's a young one. She has given out two different
dates of birth, but they agree on the day, if not the
year. She was born either on July 23, 1992 or exactly
a year later. I'm not sure when the first season of
Banshee was actually lensed, but it first aired in
January of 2013, so the filming had to be some time in
2012. She was therefore somewhere between 18 and 20
when she performed her first nude scenes, depending on
(1) whether the 2012 filming happened before or after
her birthday, and (2) which birth year is correct.
Lili also performed an excellent nude scene this year
in an episode of True Detective.
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3
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Nathalie
Emmanuel in "Game of Thrones"
season four
Game of Thrones is probably the
most popular cult preoccupation of the 21st century.
It inspires fan fiction, obsession, and endless
speculation about the ultimate winner of the actual
"game." Even I have indulged in this
temptation (link leads to
spoilers).
It is no wonder, then, that a woman this beautiful on
a show with obsessive fans can finish third for the
year, losing only to those curvaceous powerhouses,
ScarJo and Daddario.
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2
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Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin
6.2 at IMDb, 86%
positive reviews
Dude, it's ScarJo walking around
stark naked during several minutes of screen time.
Do you need more explanation?
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1
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Alexandra Daddario
in "True Detective"
season one
Alexandra not only managed to best
the popular ScarJo for the top spot, but she won going
away, earning the nod from nearly twice as many voters
as Johansson.
Her win is well deserved.
It's a great nude scene in a great show, as performed
by a spectacularly beautiful woman whose every body
part seems to have been sculpted into perfection.
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