1 Shame (2011) Actor who stripped down: Michael Fassbender
Why they’re fully nude: Boy can’t help it—sex is an addiction.
Michael Fassbender earned a Golden Globe nomination—and the respect of fellow actors, who saw what he had to offer below the waist—for his portrayal of Brandon, a 30-something sex addict fornicating his way through New York City. That is until his sister (Carey Mulligan, who also strips down to nothing) arrives and challenges his intentionally noncommittal lifestyle.
Second only to Showgirls in terms of earning an NC-17 rating for sexual content, Steve McQueen’s Shame is no kind of guilty pleasure. It’s a carefully constructed drama in which sex is the opposite of intimacy—it’s an escape from personal trauma. Something that can happen only when there is absolutely no personal connection. Men, women; one person, multiple partners; sex is Brandon’s drug of choice. And a habit that will ultimately unravel him.
[Note: For another, even less titillating, example of Fassbender’s bodily commitment to his characters and craft, watch him display a skeletal frame as hunger-striking IRA prisoner Bobby Sands in McQueen’s equally powerful Hunger.]
