7 Monster’s Ball (2001)
Actor who stripped down: Halle Berry
Why they’re fully nude: You can’t create one of cinema’s most memorable sex scenes with your clothes on.
Angela Bassett was originally set to play the lead in Marc Forster’s bleak indie, but turned the picture down when the script proved too sexual for her liking.
The content in question included one of cinema’s most memorable sex scenes, in which the two main characters—Leticia (gorgeous Halle Berry, who swooped in, took the role, and won an Oscar) and Hank (Billy Bob Thornton, at his hangdog finest)—drown their sorrows in each other. It’s a scene where the physical act of sex stands in for intimacy. And it’s a relationship based on a shared sense of loneliness and loss. It’s intense, a little bit dirty, and kind of depressing, but ultimately unforgettable in its grittiness.
