Lena Headey Had Her ‘Whole Back Tattooed’ To Limit Nude Scenes

Game Of Thrones star Lena Headey has admitted she took “quite a drastic measure” to try and limit the amount of on-screen nudity that would be asked of her.

The Emmy nominee is currently promoting her new BBC Sounds series Intimacy, in which she plays an intimacy co-ordinator going through a personal crisis.

Promoting the project during a new interview with HuffPost UK, Lena reflected on her own history of filming sex scenes and on-screen nudity, sharing that the prevalence of intimacy co-ordinators over the last decade has meant that things are markedly different for actors compared to when she was starting out.

“Most directors will ask for more than they need, in terms of nudity – so, to have someone who’s like, ‘nah, you don’t need that’, is great,” she explained.

Lena recalled: “I got my whole back tattooed at one point, because I was like, ‘at least then they’re going to have to ask me to go to makeup [before doing a sex scene]’, and I’ll say, ‘that’s going to be eight hours’.”

“There weren’t any co-ordinators. So I used ink,” she continued.

Quickly clarifying that she already wanted the tattoos that she got, Lena added: “But yes. I was like, at least if I do this, and they go, ‘can we see a full nude back?’, I could say, ‘you can, but I don’t think in the 19th century they would have had these’.”

Lena previously opened up about her love of tattoos during a 2020 interview with More.

“I always want more. It’s a terrible thing,” she claimed. “I’ll be outside a tattoo shop and hear the needle and think, ‘I could just get a little one that nobody would see…’.”

She enthused: “It’s something you can’t run from. You have to sit and find a way through [the discomfort]. I find a real calm, a real peace to [getting tattoos].”

Intimacy premieres on BBC Sounds on Wednesday 22 July. Read HuffPost UK’s full interview with Lena Headey here.