Jenny Agutter has expressed her one “regret” about doing a nude scene when she was 16.
The actor, 69, had just turned that age when she started filming the 1971 film Walkabout, which is set in the Australian Outback.
Speaking about the experience, Call the Midwife star Agutter said in a new interview with The Times: “I was 16, and a young 16. But [director] Nic Roeg showed me pictures and said, we want to create something, a Garden of Eden. For him, it was a really important moment.
“But the film, to look at now, is very bleak. How progression takes us to hell and away from heaven. Is it possible to go back to it? The centre of the film has to be innocent. So I don’t regret that.”
However, she did say her one regret about the scene stems from a factor that’s out of her hands, explaining: “Unfortunately what has happened is ... the internet and social media taking it out and putting it wherever.
“Sorry, to the people who are perverted and wish to do that, but I am not a part of that. It’s that that I regret; not [being nude] in the film.”
Acknowledging the importance of intimacy coordinators on film sets today, Agutter said: “I think it is very important that people are made to feel comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. I don’t see the necessity for anything graphic anyway.”
Agutter will next be seen in The Railway Children Return, a sequel to the 1970 film The Railway Children, which is released on 15 July.
