The funniest part of that “rip-your-clothes-off” beat isn’t the nudity – it’s the absolute panic energy Glen Powell brings to it, like his body has declared war on dignity. Powell has joked that Sydney Sweeney is basically the only person who’s “seen all of him” thanks to that scene, and he’s also admitted the stunt was a little more chaotic than it looks. He told the story like a rom-com badge of honor: moving too fast, losing traction, and realizing (a touch late) that stripping on a cliff comes with actual safety issues. The result plays exactly as intended: full nudity used as the punchline, not the prize, with Powell leaning into the embarrassment instead of trying to look cool. | © Columbia Pictures
Outlaw King opens by making a point in the most blunt possible way: Robert the Bruce is just a man, and Chris Pine isn’t hiding behind a strategic towel. Pine has addressed the full-frontal scene with a mix of shrug and side-eye, noting the double standard where male nudity becomes a bigger “event” than it should be. What works is how quickly the film moves on – this isn’t a tease, it’s a reality check, a ruler-stops-being-a-statue moment that drops you into the mud-and-blood texture of the story. Pine’s performance stays grounded and physical, and the nudity lands like part of that commitment: no glamour, no wink, just a body in a harsh world. | © Netflix
Matt Damon spent years saying he usually passed on nude scenes – then he took on Liberace’s partner and decided the story didn’t work if it flinched. He’s talked about how Behind the Candelabra required “a lot” more intimacy than his usual comfort zone, and he approached it as part of playing Scott Thorson’s vulnerability inside a relationship that’s equal parts love, control, and spectacle. Long before that, School Ties had him stripping down in the locker-room fight, and years later Brendan Fraser confirmed they were both completely naked while filming it (and that it felt genuinely scary). Two very different projects, same through-line: Damon doesn’t treat nudity as a headline, he treats it as a scene problem to solve honestly. | © HBO Films
David Fincher doesn’t do “sexy” in the usual way, so the brief full-frontal moment in Gone Girl hits like a drive-by: clinical, quick, and somehow even more talked about because it refuses to linger. Ben Affleck leaned into the chatter afterward with jokes – he quipped that, yes, it’s in there, and basically treated the whole thing like the least important scandal in a movie packed with bigger ones. That attitude fits the film’s vibe: everything is being watched, judged, and turned into a story, even the most mundane private moments. The nudity itself is almost aggressively unromantic, which is exactly why it works – one more way the movie strips Nick down when the world is already doing it figuratively. You can call it blink-and-you-miss-it, but Affleck didn’t dodge it. | © 20th Century Fox
Not many actors can pull off full-frontal nudity as both a punchline and a threat, but Viggo Mortensen somehow gets there across two wildly different films. In Captain Fantastic, the nude moment lands with off-grid casualness – Mortensen’s character is so comfortable in his own skin that the scene plays like a cultural collision, not a stunt. Flip the tone to Eastern Promises and the nudity becomes brutal practicality: Mortensen has said there was no realistic way to do that bathhouse fight without being fully exposed, because that vulnerability is the point. The famous sequence isn’t “look at him,” it’s “oh no, he’s defenseless” – until he isn’t. Either way, Mortensen makes nudity feel motivated, not manufactured. | © Electric City Entertainment
Shame doesn’t tiptoe into its subject – it kicks the door in, and Michael Fassbender meets it with a performance that’s as unsparing as the camera. The full-frontal nudity became the talking point (of course it did), but Fassbender has treated it as part of the character’s empty routine, not a stunt to “brag” about. What makes it hit is how little vanity the film allows: he’s not posing, he’s unraveling, and the physical exposure just mirrors how stripped-out his inner life feels. Hunger is a totally different kind of ordeal – less erotic, more punishing – yet Fassbender brings the same willingness to go all the way for truth, even when it’s uncomfortable to watch. The common thread is commitment: he doesn’t “do nude scenes,” he inhabits scenes that happen to require nudity. | © Film4
There’s a moment in Nightmare Alley where the movie basically dares you to look away, and Bradley Cooper is sitting there completely exposed – no clever angles, no last-second towel save. Cooper later joked (with the kind of exhausted laugh you only earn on set) that he was nude for hours while filming that bathtub sequence, and that it happened on Toni Collette’s first day, which is a hilarious bit of accidental intensity. The scene isn’t sexy; it’s vulnerable in a bleak, humiliating way, like the film is announcing that Stanton Carlisle’s charm is built on something shakier than confidence. Cooper plays that contradiction well: smooth on the surface, hollow underneath, and the nudity sells the “you’re seeing the man behind the con” idea instantly. It’s the sort of choice that could’ve felt gimmicky, but the way he commits makes it feel like character, not shock. | © Double Dare You Productions
If you want the early-career “he really went there” example, Total Eclipse is the one people point to – an intense, boundary-pushing role where Leonardo DiCaprio plays Arthur Rimbaud with zero concern for being “likable,” and the film’s sexual frankness includes moments of real nudity. It’s messy, romantic, ugly, and young in a way that feels almost reckless, which makes sense given where DiCaprio was in his career at the time. Then The Wolf of Wall Street arrives as a different kind of exposure: he’s not trying to be seductive, he’s trying to be grotesque and funny and spiritually bankrupt, leaning into humiliation as performance fuel. The movie is loaded with explicit material, and DiCaprio’s willingness to look ridiculous – physically and emotionally – becomes part of why Jordan Belfort feels so shamelessly alive. Two films, decades apart, both allergic to modesty. | © Red Granite Pictures
Tigerland has that scrappy, sweaty realism where privacy doesn’t exist, and Colin Farrell has laughed in interviews about how nervous he was doing his first explicit material – down to overthinking the grooming like his life depended on it. The funny twist is that he’s also admitted the “full exposure” panic wasn’t even fully rewarded in the final result, which is very Farrell: overshare the anxiety, shrug at the outcome. What still matters is how boldly he plays Roland Bozz, all swagger and troublemaking, with the camera treating his body like part of the character’s rawness rather than a polished product. Triage shifts him into haunted mode, and Farrell’s physicality becomes quieter – more about damage carried in posture, silences, and small tells than big speeches. Across both, he’s never precious about the body; he uses it as another acting instrument, whether the scene is charged, awkward, or just brutally unromantic. | © Regency Enterprises
The opener of Forgetting Sarah Marshall isn’t subtle: heartbreak, towel drop, full-frontal – Jason Segel basically announces, “We’re not doing polite comedy today.” Segel has joked for years about how much discussion went into that shot (including the editing choices), and he’s told the story of his mom going into crisis-management mode afterward – right down to warning relatives so nobody else got blindsided at the theater. With Sex Tape, the nudity is less “shock punchline” and more “married people chaos,” and Segel talked about having to get in shape because he’s naked a lot and the reality of filming it is about as unsexy as craft service. The reason both work is that he never performs nudity like a victory lap; he performs it like an extension of embarrassment, honesty, and comedic timing. Segel’s superpower is making “naked” feel human instead of heroic. | © Apatow Productions
Jane Campion shoots explicit scenes like it’s a language you’re only half fluent in, which is why those moments feel so unnervingly close. Mark Ruffalo plays Detective Malloy with that bruised, watchful charm that keeps you guessing whether he’s safety or danger, and the film leans into intimacy as a kind of interrogation. The nudity doesn’t read as “look at him” so much as “this is what it costs to let someone in,” messy edges included. Ruffalo’s willingness to be physically exposed fits the movie’s whole vibe: sweaty, nocturnal, and slightly off-balance, like the city itself is listening. Nothing about the scenes is polished, and that’s exactly the point in In the Cut. | © Pathé Productions Ltd
Oppenheimer surprises people because the nudity isn’t framed as scandal – it’s used to strip the myth down to a man making choices he can’t un-make. Cillian Murphy appears nude in the film’s intimate moments, but the camera plays it blunt and unglamorous, more about vulnerability than anatomy. Jump back to 28 Days Later and the exposure is even less romantic: Murphy’s character wakes up in a hospital, disoriented and basically reduced to survival mode, with the scene emphasizing helplessness and shock rather than titillation. Different directors, different intentions, same result: Murphy’s body becomes another storytelling tool, not a flex. If anything, he makes nudity feel like a consequence of the moment, not the moment itself. | © Universal Pictures
There’s no separating Mark Wahlberg’s screen-nudity reputation from the myth-making around Dirk Diggler. In Boogie Nights, Wahlberg is nude on screen, but the film’s most infamous “full reveal” is famously helped by a prosthetic – very on-brand for a story about performance, ego, and illusion. What’s interesting is how he’s handled it since: with jokes, a bit of disbelief, and zero attempt to pretend it was “artsy” in the traditional sense. Broken City actually leans more on sleaze adjacent to him – he’s reacting to what he sees, not necessarily doing the exposing himself. Then Me Time swings back into comedy discomfort with Wahlberg stripping down for a gag that’s built on sheer awkward commitment. | © New Line Cinema
Nothing tests an audience’s tolerance like comedy that refuses to “tastefully cut away,” and Sacha Baron Cohen made that refusal a signature move. The infamous nude wrestling sequence in Borat isn’t just obscenity – it’s escalation as a weapon, pushing the scene past comfort until everyone in the room is forced to react honestly (or flee). Baron Cohen’s whole trick is using embarrassment as a truth serum, and nudity becomes part of the trap: you can’t politely pretend this isn’t happening. With Brüno, he cranks the provocation even higher, turning explicit imagery into a dare aimed straight at hypocrisy and pearl-clutching. Love him or hate him, he commits so hard it becomes impossible to separate the joke from the risk. | © 20th Century Fox
By the time the movie reaches its most talked-about nude moment, it’s not even trying to be subtle – it's going for something feral, triumphant, and a little nauseating. Saltburn treats the body like part of the power game, and the nudity lands as domination, not seduction, the kind of scene that’s designed to make you laugh and recoil at the same time. Barry Keoghan doesn’t play Oliver like a mastermind; he plays him like someone who’s been watching, learning, and quietly rewiring the room’s rules until he finally snaps them in half. The full nudity becomes the punctuation mark on that takeover, a visual “I own this now” that’s equal parts grotesque and darkly funny. It’s bold in a way that’s hard to unsee, and Keoghan knows it. | © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Full-frontal scenes can steal the spotlight, but sometimes that’s the point – awkward comedy, brutal honesty, or a character with nothing left to hide. These 15 male actors went completely nude on screen in films and series that range from prestige drama to “wait… they really did that?”
We’re sticking to moments where it actually serves the scene, not just the headlines. And if you’re wondering which actresses have gone all-in too, don’t worry – we’ve got you.
