Olivia Wilde‘s rise to fame was epic. As her amazing talent as an actress grew in the 2010s, Wilde had also started building a reputation as a sex symbol, and then also as one of the most coveted actresses in Hollywood. Aside from her stunning looks, another side of her that often appealed a lot to her fans was her seeming comfort and penchant for doing various kinds of sexual scenes; few actors of such merit have embraced their bodies in such a powerful and captivating way. In 2019, her time in front of the screen was visibly reduced as she started focusing on directing instead.
In 2022, Wilde started filming the controversial movie, Don’t worry baby, which also featured herself and Harry Styles, who had also been her real-life partner in recent years. In typical Olivia Wilde fashion, the movie was very sex-positive and doesn’t shy away from spicy scenes. This became a focal point of the film as Wilde herself initially drove all the hype and dialogue surrounding it to her embracing female sexuality on screen and believing that sex scenes should depict more female pleasure on screen.
Those comments have since caused quite a stir, and Wilde even tried to backtrack on them. Whatever her true feelings, there’s no doubt that Olivia Wilde has always had a penchant for stepping in and directing some pretty steamy scenes, using her beauty in heartbreaking and powerful ways. Here’s a look back at some of the most racist scenes she’s been in over the years.
10 Strange kiss in the house
Way back in 2007, long before Olivia Wilde became the A-List star and talented director she is today, she had a starring role in the hit medical show, House. She played a brilliant diagnostician named Remy “Thirteen” Hadley on the show. While many of Thirteen’s character traits were initially guarded by the character, some of these gradually began to come out as the episodes progressed.
It was eventually confirmed that Thirteen was indeed a bisexual character, and she later shared a passionate kissing scene with another female character named Amy. Wilde also kissed her black co-star, Omar Epps, on the show, and had a few steamy scenes with him that sparked a racist backlash that led to the star receiving death threats.
9 Kiss with Mischa Barton
Apart from known for House, prior to getting into it, Wilde was also known for her recurring stint on another hit show, The OC. The teen drama show featuring rich, beautiful adolescents in the style of Beverley Hills, 90210, was popular in its time and was known to get a little steamy at times. This suited Olivia Wilde just fine. After joining the show as a fresh, beautiful 20-year-old actress at the time, Wilde’s character Alex Kelly quickly became one of the most exciting on the show.
Again, her character was bisexual and dated both men and women on the show. However, it was her time with one of the main characters of the show that caught the attention of most people. The reason was that the other person was played by the equally beautiful Mischa Barton, who shared an onscreen kiss with Olivia Wilde – one that Wilde later said was her favorite on-screen kiss. The pair would also share other intimate scenes in later episodes of the show.
8 Ordinary scene from The Change-Up
The change was a typically raunchy and hilarious movie you’d expect when Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman teamed up for their take on the classic body-switching trope. Olivia Wilde makes for a sultry addition to the film, as she plays Bateman’s sexy colleague in the movie that the married character has often fantasized about. After a magical body swap with his best friend, who is a single man, he gets his chance.
The resulting scene is a steamy scene where Ryan Reynolds and Olivia Wilde go for it. Her character makes for a feisty persona throughout the movie. In another racy scene, she gets a tattoo on the inside of her thigh.
7 She did it again with butter
By 2012, you could have forgiven anyone who harbored genuine suspicions that Olivia Wilde might be bisexual in real life, too. After her famous same-sex kiss scenes in The OC And Housein the movie Butter, Wilde again shared a sexy scene with another woman on screen. This time, the scene was even more racier for two reasons.
First, the other woman was Ashley Greene, the gorgeous actress who had already made hearts beat faster for her role as Alice Cullen in the Dusk movies. The scene itself had picked up more steam since it started, with them doing more than just kissing, and sharing a passionate moment in it too. Wilde also plays a stripper in the film and therefore also has an extremely raunchy dance scene in the film.
6 Tense Scene in Meadowland
While Olivia Wilde has certainly had a tendency to create borderline scenes, what makes her scenes racy doesn’t always have to do with the sexual elements of them. A brilliant actress who also had a knack for choosing well-written and thought-provoking films, Wilde’s most intimate scenes often went beyond just sex appeal – a fact she perfectly proved in the drama film, Meadowland.
One of the standout scenes in the film initially sees Wilde in a particularly powerful sex scene. However, what pushed this scene beyond racy and tense was its unsettling context. The movie was about extreme grief and the ways two parents deal with it. Once this is known, the scene takes on a deeper meaning as its gritty, and the way it ends with a photo of Wilde’s scarred wrists made it a particularly powerful and emotionally layered moment.
5 Evocative moments in vinyl
Vinyl was a short-lived adult show created by Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger and others in 2016. It was about the New York music scene in the 1970s, never shying away from how much this period in the industry was defined by an exorbitant sex, drugs and rock and roll culture.
Wilde had some famously steamy parts on the show. In the first of her scenes from this show to be featured on this list, Wilde shares a raunchy and suggestive dance with one of the artists her record label executive husband works with, as he watches with the other man’s date on his lap .
Aside from the obvious sexual connotations of this scene that resembles exchanging partners, the fact that the other couple was black also had deep meaning, given that the show took place in the 1970s, a time when society’s attitude towards interracial relationships was. vastly different. Adding to the intrigue of the scene is that Wilde’s husband is initially on board with everything, but later goes through a lot of mixed emotions about her actions and his own feelings about it as they later share an edgy elevator scene together.
4 Scene from Deadfall
In the 2012 crime movie Dead trap, Olivia Wilde plays a fugitive casino robber who encounters an ex-convict boxer (Eric Bana) on his way home for the holidays. The pair eventually hook up and share a pretty steamy hotel room scene together.
There’s nothing deeper or more layered about this one. It’s just a well-directed love scene between two gorgeous movie stars. The scene is racy in the sense that the passionate build-up of the couple wanting each other is so strong, that when they end up in the room together, they don’t even make it to bed before they can no longer resist each other.
3 Wilde gets intimate in Alpha Dog
Way back in 2006, Olivia Wilde played a small role in the disturbing crime drama film, alpha dog. However, the movie had some meaning to her, despite how small her part in it was. Towards the end of the film, Wilde shares an intimate scene with Emile Hirsch. While Wilde wears her top half in the scene for the first time, Hirsch’s character is already so preoccupied with his problems in the film that he can barely concentrate on her and ends up not performing.
While the scene itself never went that far in terms of being racist and pale in comparison to some of her more controversial scenes, this scene will forever go down in history as the first time she showed how comfortable she was with her own body.
2 Hotel scene in third person
The drama from 2013 Third person features Olivia Wilde providing the audience with a breathtaking scene to remember. For all the talent in one movie (like Liam Neeson and Mila Kunis), it’s usually one scene that stands out the most. In the scene, Wilde’s character, who sleeps with Neeson in the film, appears outside his hotel room wearing a bathrobe which she soon drops and gives to him, saying it is his dressing gown, revealing that she is not wearing anything underneath. However, it’s where the scene goes next that is comically unforgettable.
He plays along and she expects to be allowed into his room. He then turns the joke on her when he closes and locks the door, causing her to stumble through the hotel corridors completely naked as she is caught on the security cameras. It’s a hilarious scene with a really clever deception, and it inspires how comfortable Wilde is with her body.
1 Wilde sheds all for art in vinyl
Lately, Olivia Wilde has made no secret of her belief in sex positivity for women in movies. Much of the build up to the Don’t worry honey premiere centered around the sex scenes and Wilde’s comments on them. She was even forced to cut out some racy sexual scenes of the trailer by the MPAA. This was typical of her as a director, because years earlier, even when she spent most of her time in front of the camera, Wilde had demonstrated a consummate ease in pulling punchy scenes over and over again.
For Vinyl after only one season was canceled, Wilde still managed to complete an iconic scene in it that announced just how far she was willing to go. In the scene, Wilde casually takes off her clothes in a room full of people to pose for a performer, with the seeming abandonment of a person completely comfortable with herself and her body. The scene continues for quite some time after she sits on a bed where the artist then moves her to get the pose just right.
For its sheer raunchiness, the scene was by far one of Wilde’s most memorable of her career. It turned out early on that all of her comments as a director about how much she wants sex scenes in her films, and why she thinks female scenes should be more sex-positive, are most likely not just shallow talk to stir up controversy. After all, as this list shows, even as an actress in front of the lens, she puts her money where her mouth is, and moves on; she puts her body where her theory is.