Amanda Seyfried says she found it “nerve-racking” to shoot a love scene with veteran actress Julianne Moore for the new Atom Egoyan movie Chloe.
“All this kind of intimacy on screen and in movies is just not natural,” Seyfried, 24, said.
“It’s not natural.”
Seyfried plays the titular character in the film — a young Toronto prostitute hired by a doctor (Moore) to seduce her husband (Liam Neeson), whom she suspects of infidelity.
Chloe reports back to the doctor after each encounter and a perilously sensual relationship between the two women follows.
“It’s just a lot of discussion,” Seyfried said of prepping for intimate scenes. “It’s all about discussion and understanding of exactly that moment and why it is taking place.”
“For someone so very young she didn’t seem to be carrying any baggage into it. I didn’t have to hold her hand through any of it. She was very, very present,” Moore said.
Moore credits Egoyan’s handling of such material as the reason why what could have been “sensationalistic or prurient” scenes between two women some 20 years apart in age instead became an examination of human behaviour.
“He makes movies that are about behaviour. He plotted it all very carefully,” she said.
The film marks a departure for Egoyan, who became one of Canada’s foremost independent filmmakers through celebrated works such as Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter.
It’s the first time the director didn’t write the script for one of his films. Of the love scene, Egoyan said it’s not the type of thing you can ask people to do and “just let the camera roll.”
“It is actually incredibly, carefully rehearsed so it can seem as urgent and as natural as it does,” he said.
Moore said she had wanted to work with Egoyan since the two met at the Toronto festival in the mid-’90s and “professed our admiration for each other.”
The strength of the story drew her further in, she said.
“I’m interested in the movie because it’s an exploration of marriage and how you can ostensibly be in something you think you understand and then suddenly be bewildered by it, have all the rules change,” said Moore.
So many movies are about people getting together, getting married, then cue the credits, she added.
Neesom suffered a tragedy while filming the movie — his wife Natasha Richardson died following a skiing accident in Quebec in March 2009.
Neeson returned to the set shortly afterward.
“That’s a testament. He’s just an exceptional actor,” Egoyan said.
“Chloe” opens in Canadian theatres Friday.