Jake and Anne wanted sex scenes

Los Angeles – Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway were in favour of the sex scenes and nudity in Love and Other Drugs.

The new movie stars Jake as ladies' man Jamie who falls for Maggie (Hathaway), a young woman battling Parkinson's disease and director Edward Zwick revealed his stars felt the raunchy moments were necessary to accurately portray the young couple's developing relationship.

He explained: "Together we all decided to commit to the authenticity of this relationship. In my experience, when a couple gets together, those initial moments are spent in bed. The bed becomes their world. If we'd done it with the covers up to their necks, it would have been risible.

"In some sense, the nudity is as much about intimacy as it is about sex. I mean, they spend a lot of time naked just talking."

Despite spending much of their time on set naked, Edward said his lead actors were never self-conscious.

He added to Hollywoodandfine.com: "We wanted sex to be part of the currency of the relationship – a hedge against intimacy. The actors had a lot to do. They had acting, they had to deliver exposition, to be comical, to speak the dialogue.

"So they were less self-conscious than you might imagine. I wanted them to feel free to do what felt right."