Keira almost turned down ‘Dangerous Method’ due to spanking sex scenes

London: Keira Knightley has revealed that she almost turned down her new film ‘Dangerous Method’ because she was afraid to star in spanking sex scenes.

The actress who landed a role in David Cronenberg’s film, which is about Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and the birth of psychoanalysis, had a shock when she first read the script.


Knightley said she almost turned the part of Jung’s formerly hysterical patient and lover Sabina Spielrein, due to a spanking sex scene opposite Michael Fassbender, who portrays Jung.

“They are always difficult and they are always exposed. This one was, sort of, something quite different,” the Mirror quoted her as saying.

“There were these two scenes and I didn’t know that I could do those two scenes. In the age of Internet and all the rest of it, I didn’t know that that is what I want particularly to be out there.

“I phoned him up initially to turn it down because I thought they were incredibly important for the piece.

“So it wasn’t a question of trying to negotiate them out of the film because I thought they were very necessary for the film. But I just thought, ‘I don’t think I can do that.

“So, I phoned up David and said: ‘I love you, I love your work, but I really don’t think that I want to do this.

“And he said, ‘Well it would be a tragedy if you turned the role down because of that, so if necessary we can take them out.

“And I said, ‘No, because I understand why they are there’. He said, ‘Well look, I don’t want it to be sexy, and I don’t want it to be voyeuristic. I want it to be clinical,’” the actress revealed.

And Keira finally filmed the scene after Cronenberg convinced it wasn’t ‘sexy’.

Keira said: “We talked for quite a long time about exactly what it was and trying to understand it psychologically. Once we discussed, I said ‘Alright, fine, as long as it is not sexy.

“That brutal horrible aspect is kept and it isn’t a sexy spanking scene,” she added.