I just start by apologising. You sort of try to set some ground rules and apologise for them. Apparently Sir Laurence Olivier once said something about sex scenes to the effect of 'I apologise if I get aroused and I apologise if I do not get aroused'.

But there's sort of always that kind of awkward state of, like, 'Is this okay? Is that okay?' Then in between it's like, 'Let's act like nothing happened,' and then you see how good of an actor you really are."

- No Strings Attached puts a spotlight on casual sex and friends with benefits. In some communities and families sex is a taboo topic. It is not something that can be discussed openly. What do you think about that?

I think there's so much that's not said about sex in our country even from an education level. And I do a lot of work on human trafficking and I connect a lot with girls that come up in this trade, if you will, and partially about a lack of education about sex in the country.

I think that sometimes we get to make films that sort of open things up and making things that people can talk about. One of the things I find really interesting, and I don't want to veer off on a weird human trafficking thing, but one of the interesting things, especially for women, in the sex education process in schools, the one thing that they teach about is how to get pregnant and how to not get pregnant, but they don't really talk about sex as a point of pleasure for women.

The male orgasm is right there and readily available to learn about because it's actually a part of the reproductive cycle, but a female orgasm isn't really talked about in the education system. Therefore part of that, as a spin off, creates a place where women aren't empowered around their own sexuality and around their own sexual selves.

From a purely entertainment point of view, to create a movie with a female lead that is empowered with her own sexuality I think is a really powerful thing. I think if we can give teenage people something to think about from a sex perspective I would say that it would be to start opening up a conversation where women are empowered with their own sexual experiences from an educational level as well as an entertainment level.

- Can you relate to the character your play in No Strings Attached?

I think you always find personal threads that you can relate to. In this film it could be coming off of a really bad breakup and where that leads you from a relationship position. Like, 'I don't want to be involved.

I don't want to have a relationship. I'm done with relationships'. So I think there are things like that you find you can relate to, that you plug into, that you can connect to as a person. I think that my character is really lucky to find someone in the other character that connects them. So I think I have that in common with my character.

- What's your next project?

I'm getting ready to reunite with Garry Marshall on a New Year's Eve project that's not a sequel, but somewhat of a follow up to the Valentine's Day movie that we did together.

No Strings Attached is out on DVD & Blu-Ray now

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