Peter Sarsgaard’s appearance in indie film, Very Good Girls , includes a sex scene with young actress Dakota Fanning, which would be all in a day’s work if his mother-in-law, Naomi Foner, was not in the director’s chair.
"Bizarre, totally bizarre," Sarsgaard told E! News Foner directing him. The film, which tells the story of two high school freshmen, Fanning and Elizabeth Olson, who seek to lose their virginity over the summer, marks Foner’s directorial debut.
Though Sarsgaard was thrilled to be working with Foner, mother of the actor’s wife Maggie Gyllenhaal, he admits he did not give the script a careful enough reading, as the intimate scene came as a surprise to him during shooting.
"I hadn't read it that carefully, so I didn't realize I was going to be doing a sex scene," he said. "So that was the real surprise. Maggie and I kind of realized it at about the same time that I would be doing that."
Because neither Foner nor Fanning had much experience with bedroom sequences, Sarsgaard had to lend a helping hand in directing the 19-year-old actress.
"I said [to Dakota], 'You're going to lay down and I'm going to disappear out of frame and you're going to make a face,'" Sarsgaard recalled. "And I'm not going to be there while you're pretending I'm having sex with you. We're going to be on a close-up on you."
Fanning and sister Elle, 15, recently turned heads in an ad campaign for J. Estina’s Fall 2013 collection, Yahoo reported. The sisters were dressed in cream, looking much older than their teenage years.
While Fanning may not have caused stir after filming a sex scene with the much older Sarsgaard when Very Good Girls premiered in January, her first dabble in the advertisement business sparked controversy. Fanning’s ad for a Marc Jacobs perfume, which hit print in 2011, was banned in the U.K. for being “sexually provocative.”
At the time, Fanning shrugged off the drama, saying she “loved” the quirky designer and had “laughed about it” with him.
Image: NBC