In the 1980s, when Rob Lowe was 24 years old, he taped himself having sex with a 16-year-old in a Georgia hotel room. Guess which part of it was illegal? The “taping” part. Lowe didn’t work for a few years after that whole mess came out, but he was obviously given second, third and fourth chances to come back. He even called the sex tape “the best thing that ever happened to me.” Gross. I bring all of this up because Rob Lowe recently spoke about how it wasn’t really that “brave” of Nicole Kidman to do sex scenes in Babygirl because back in his day, those kinds of scenes happened all the time.

Rob Lowe is sounding off on how sex scenes are thought about in films today. While speaking with Sex and The City star Kristin Davis on the Feb. 27 episode of his Literally! podcast, Lowe and Davis discussed how it’s rare to have “sexy movies” nowadays, but Lowe “took it back,” given he saw Nicole Kidman‘s Babygirl which he described as “pretty great.” However, the two went on to candidly discuss about why films are now being considered “brave” for even having sex scenes in them to begin with.

“They’re like, ‘It’s so brave. She’s so brave,’” Lowe said. “She’s brave because she has a sex scene? Like, that’s brave now. In our day, it was required.”

Lowe went on to note that in the early days there would be a “page 73 rule” in the “mid-second act” where the “sex scene was always on page 73” and you “didn’t have to read the whole script” to know if an intimate scene was planned. I know, they Blue Lagoon it,” he said, “be with each other on a moonlit night. But, now it’s so brave.”

Davis agreed and said that “things have changed” and “continue to change” in the industry when comparing to their early days.

“I always feel, like, out of chaos comes opportunity,” Lowe added. “My attitude is always you make the most of it [and] disruption is actually a great time to build new things. If you can be one of the nimble ones and you could be one of the forward-thinking ones … not entrenched and not trying to re-create yesterday but try to understand tomorrow, it’s your time.”

[From THR]

He’s saying this in such a patronizing way, I almost hate that I agree with the general sentiment. Movies used to have more sex scenes. Movies used to be sexier. Most actors did films with love scenes and it was no big deal back in the day. It’s partly because of the generational shifts – the Puriteens who hate any kind of sexiness in films, the conservatism in younger audiences in general. But there’s also been a shift in recent years because actors genuinely have more power and they don’t want to do those scenes or they find them exploitative. As we learn more and more, the “Page 73” stuff Lowe is referencing was really awful for so many actresses. Plus, even back in Lowe’s day, it was rare for an actress over 40 to have those kinds of scenes, which is why people were going on and on about Nicole Kidman’s bravery.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.