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Ben Affleck's "Marathon" Sex Scenes With Sienna Miller End in Tears

Is the Live by Night director trying to tell fans something about his "sexual prowess?"

By Zach Johnson Jan 09, 2017 7:45 PMTags
Watch: Sienna Miller Talks "Marathon" Love Scenes With Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck unintentionally earned quite a reputation on the set of Live by Night.

The 44-year-old Oscar winner plays notorious gangster Joe Coughlin in Warner Bros.' crime drama, which he also wrote and produced. Sienna Miller co-stars an Irish vixen, Emma Gould. To bring Dennis Lehane popular novel to life, Miller and Affleck had to film several sex scenes.

It was an unusual experience for both actors, as Affleck's directorial duties required him to give Miller some acting notes—all while making her feel comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. "It's hysterical," Miller told E! News anchor Maria Menounos over the weekend. "Ben and I are like brother and sister, thank God, so there was no awkwardness. There was just a lot of stupid giggling. He's very professional—I am not, but he is. In that environment, it was a cool scene."

Claire Folger

Even before she joined the cast, Miller knew her role was rather risqué.

"There was a montage in the script saying we did it everywhere: in the car, in the bar...I was like, 'That's an entire day of just love scenes! OK. How do we do this?'" Miller remembered. "Obviously, by the time nine hours of it has gone past, I was shaking with tears running down my face. I mean, I can't tell you—but you have to laugh. Ben is just professional. It is what it is."

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Ben Affleck: Movie Star

At one point, Affleck instructed the movie's director of photography, Robert Richardson, to "keep rolling" so they could film the same sex scene "a few times" without having to cut. "I was like, 'OK, obviously Joe Coughlin is a real performer.' This happened three times, and by the third I [finally said], 'Are you joking?'" the 35-year-old actress laughed. "And then I was like, 'I don't know what you're trying to tell people, Ben, about your sexual prowess—your abilities.'"

"It turns out that he was just giving himself options without cutting," she added. "But to me it was the funniest thing. I was like, 'No one can do what you're doing, the marathon love scene.'"

Miller couldn't stop laughing at Affleck. "There will be some outtakes from that [scene] where I have to walk out of the room," she admitted, "because I just have tears running down my face."

Watch: Ben Affleck Talks "World Champion" Sex Scenes With Sienna Miller

When Menounos caught up with Affleck and co-star Chris Messina, the actor-director shared his side of the story. "We were starting over, like all scenes. You start the scene—you get to the end—you go back to the beginning. Sienna thought that I was trying to make myself out to be some kind of world champion, where it just never ended," Affleck laughed. "I just keep going, going, and going again and again. She started laughing and I was like, 'Laughing isn't really the response that I'm looking for with this.' She was like, 'How long can you go? You're Superman!'"

Perhaps she meant Batman. Regardless, Affleck told E! News, "The camera was still rolling. I didn't tell her ahead of time, so she was taken a little off guard. I thought she'd just roll with it."

For more hilarious stories from the set, watch the videos now.

Live by Night—which also stars Chris Cooper as Irving Figgis, Elle Fanning as Loretta Figgis, Brendan Gleeson as Thomas Coughlin and Zoe Saldana as Graciella Corrales—is out Friday.