Jake Gyllenhaal said steamy scene with Jennifer Aniston was actually ‘torture’

Jake Gyllenhaal admitted that the steamy scene he once had to film with Jennifer Aniston was actually ‘torture’ - something that will no doubt come as a surprise to many.

Gyllenhaal worked alongside the Friends star in 2002 flick The Good Girl, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

The movie follows 30-year-old Justine Last (Aniston), who lives in small-town Texas with husband Phil (John C. Reilly), and works at a local big-box store called Retail Radio.

It’s here that she meets the much younger Holden (Gyllenhaal), who soon falls for his co-worker despite their eight-year age gap - and the fact that Justine is married, of course.

The two characters eventually end up having sex at a motel, which was understandably ‘awkward’ to film.

Reflecting on the project nearly two decades after the movie was released, Gyllenhaal spoke about what it had been like filming the raunchy moments with Aniston.

Speaking to Howard Stern on his radio show in 2021, the actor was asked if it was 'torture' shooting those scenes with someone he’d previously admitted to having a huge crush on.

Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gyllenhaal in The Good Girl. (Searchlight Pictures)

"Oh yeah, it was torture, yes it was,'' Gyllenhaal replied.

''But it was also not torture. I mean, come on, it was like a mix of both."

Stern then asked: "Did you say to Jennifer Aniston, 'Listen Jennifer, I'm not trying to be rude here, if you're feeling something - protrusion or whatever - I can't control this'?"

Laughing, Gyllenhaal said: "Yes, I said it just like that."

The star went on to describe all sex scenes as ‘awkward’, as there can often be as many as 50 people in the room watching along.

"That doesn't turn me on," he added.

"So most of the time, it's oddly mechanical."

Instead, such scenes often feel like a ‘dance’ that has to be choreographed for the camera, he said.

Gyllenhaal has also had to film similar scenes with Anne Hathaway - and on two separate movies.

The pair starred alongside one another in Brokeback Mountain and Love and Other Drugs, with Gyllenhaal saying the former made their love scenes in the latter much less uncomfortable.

"I’m lucky. Annie and I had already had sex on film in Brokeback Mountain, so I wasn't too nervous," he said at the time of the movie's release.

"There's something about the way Annie and I both work which is inherently very musical."