Sophie Kennedy Clark on Giving Her Best O-Face for Her ‘Nymphomaniac’ Character Poster
Last month the buzz surrounding Lars von Trier‘s “Nymphomaniac” hit a fever pitch when the marketing team behind the hardcore sex odyssey unleashed 14 provocative character posters onto the web, each showcasing a character at their most orgasmic. Among the more well known faces (Uma Thurman, Shia LaBeouf and Willem Dafoe and the lot), are a spattering of unknown ones, including Sophie Kennedy Clark who before “Nymphomania” drops stateside next year appears as a young Judi Dench in Stephen Frears’ upcoming potential Oscar-contender “Philomena.”
We sat down with the budding actress (she appeared briefly opposite Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows”) to talk “Philomena,” and couldn’t help but ask about her naughty shot that caused an online stir. (Our full interview with Clark will appear on Indiewire later this month.)
The day of poster shoot, Clark said she was greeted by “a Danish photographer who’s opening gambit was ‘Sophie, are you ready to be part of this sexual revolution?'”
“Next thing you know, you have your top off in front of the camera with them asking if I want fifteen minutes by myself. It was one of those ‘if my friends could see me now’ moments. There was weird elevator music in the background. It was so bizarre.”
Clark was presented with three options for the final photograph, two of which she said she would never want “unleashed upon the general public.” The final choice “had a nice balance of me not feeling self conscious about it but also knowing that I wasn’t trying to look hot in it,” she said.
To Clark’s surprise, her parents first learned of the poster via a friend of theirs who had seen it posted online. “My dad sent me a text with nothing else but ‘You look like you’re being crucified,'” she said. “You never want to walk in on your parents having sex and the last thing you want them to do is see a head-shot of you (orgasming) that their mates sent them.”
Still, Clark is proud of the photo. “I came third in The Guardian’s online poll, above Uma Thurman,” she said. “I’ll take that.”
