Bodies of work: 35 unforgettable nude scenes

SANDRA BULLOCK AND RYAN REYNOLDS

In The Proposal (2009)
There's nothing sexier than two people who hate each other, naked, slamming their bodies up against one another awkwardly. Okay, the sexy quotient goes up when they're played by Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. And it helps if they're wet. —Marc Bernardin

SHARON STONE

In Basic Instinct (1992)

Basic Instinct's famous leg-crossing scene, you know the one.

JAYE DAVIDSON

In The Crying Game (1992)
Didn't see that coming, did you? Never has a John Thomas been so integral to a film's plot.

HALLE BERRY

In Monster's Ball (2001)
This wasn't the first time Halle Berry had dropped her kit for a movie — that'd be the otherwise forgettable Swordfish — but it was the first time she had a valid reason to do so. As a woefully repressed recent widow, baring her body to Billy Bob Thornton's prison guard was the equivalent to baring her soul. Plus, it was totally hot. —Marc Bernardin

EWAN MCGREGOR

In Trainspotting (1996)
It's almost hard to believe that a dude who drops trou as often as McGregor does is also known to millions of kids as General Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Master and keeper of all things good and pure. But we adults knew him first as heroin junkie Mark Renton in Danny Boyle's breakthrough feature — in which McGregor showed off his not-so-wee lightsaber after a quickie with an underage vixen (Kelly Macdonald). —Marc Bernardin

JASON SEGEL

in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
It's once, twice, three times a wiener in the first scenes for Jason Segel's pitiful but lovable Peter Bretter in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (produced by Judd Apatow; see also Walk Hard). Prop comedy indeed, these initial glimpses of Peter's flaccid friend — paired nicely with his undefined abs and pecs in the early stages of man boob — succeeded in making his character immediately relatable. In that ''Oh, man, I've dated/been that dude'' kinda way. —Lisa Raphael

UMA THURMAN

in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989)
Uma Thurman became a star with her first nude scene — jaws dropped when the 18-year-old ingenue took her top off for a sex scene with John Malkovich in 1988's Dangerous Liaisons — but this scene was a lot more artful. Literally, as she plays the goddess Venus, emerging naked from the surf via clamshell, her hair strategically draped, in an homage to Botticelli's famous painting. —Gary Susman

JULIEANNE MOORE

in Short Cuts (1993)

DONALD SUTHERLAND

in Animal House (1978)
Karen Allen has said she was reluctant to appear in only a shirt during the scene where Boon (Peter Riegert) catches Katy (Allen) with Professor Jennings (Sutherland). Then, she said, Sutherland (whose sex scene with Julie Christie in Don't Look Now was so torrid it was long rumored to be unsimulated) volunteered to show his rear end if Allen showed hers. Allen relented, resulting in the now famous scene where Sutherland reaches into a kitchen cabinet, casually revealing that there's nothing on under his sweater. —Gary Susman

JOHN CLEESE

in A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
His character is named Archie Leach (which was Cary Grant's real name), and though John Cleese is not nearly as suave as his namesake — especially when showing off his middle-aged bod to Jamie Lee Curtis as he tries to strip seductively for her — he's certainly a lot more hilarious. —Gary Susman

BART SIMPSON

in The Simpsons Movie (2007)
When you're eternally 10 years old, you can appreciate the finer things in life — like it being somewhat socially acceptable for you to be sans clothing in public. Bart Simpson is known for sporting his mischief sometimes in place of his blue shorts. His little saffron-hued rump is permanently etched in the minds of every fan of the TV show, but his totally naked full frontal skateboard ride in The Simpsons Movie caused the Motion Picture Association of America to spank the flick with a PG-13 rating. —Lisa Raphael

DANIEL CRAIG

in Casino Royale (2006)
Nudity, for many of us, can be a painful ordeal (the reason How to Look Good Naked is necessary). But usually we aren't being stripped by a scurrilous Eurotrash banker and forced to endure a ball beating like the one James Bond suffered at the hands of Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. (Those hoping to see his bits and bobs were sorely disappointed.) —Christian Blauvelt

BRIGITTE BARDOT

in Le Mépris (1963)
Master provocateur Jean-Luc Godard began his ambitious Hollywood satire (and loose adaptation of Homer's Odyssey) Contempt with a lengthy, unbroken shot of the bare loveliness of Brigitte Bardot (although only from behind). While Godard rapidly changes the color of the light — making us aware of the manipulated, air-brushed, artificial nature of screen goddesses — costar Michel Piccoli enumerates Bardot's physical attributes in a literary device known as blason, gleefully mixing high and low culture. —Christian Blauvelt

KATE WINSLET

in almost anything — Titanic (1997), Iris (2001), Little Children (2006)...
This lovely leading lady is no stranger to dropping trou (and blou) — in the name of art, of course. There were the sensual shots in Iris, all the sex in Little Children, and how could we forget the infamous naked drawing scene in Titanic? But, you really can't blame her for the latter — in 1997, just about any girl would have disrobed for Leonardo DiCaprio. —Lisa Raphael

PETER SELLERS

in A Shot in the Dark (1964)
Perhaps the funniest scene in this Blake Edwards-directed murder-mystery spoof features Peter Sellers wearing an acoustic guitar...and not much else: As the bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau, Sellers, in hot pursuit of the beautiful Maria Gambrelli (Elke Sommer), stumbles into a nudist camp. We never see any real skin, but Sellers' eyebrows more than tell the tail tale of what he is privy to within those walls. —Adrienne Day

VIGGO MORTENSEN

in Eastern Promises (2007)
In a near-perfect example of can't-look-away-can't-NOT-look-away filmmaking, Russian mobster Nikolai Luzhin (Mortensen) engages in a brutal steam-room knife fight with nothing but mist to cloak his nethers. —Adrienne Day

SACHA BARON COHEN

in Borat (2006)
It's not like watching Viggo Mortensen fighting in his birthday suit in Eastern Promises. Proving once and for all that not all nudity is a good thing, the titular Kazakh journalist crashes through a convention hall while nude wrestling with traveling companion Azamat (Ken Davitian), a bravura display of stunt acting that precariously straddles the line between fearlessness and psychosis (especially once security guards intervene). If the sight of Cohen's hairy bod doesn't disgust you, then Davitian's sumo-size one will. —Christian Blauvelt

KIRK DOUGLAS

in Saturn 3 (1980)
Long before Viggo Mortensen's naked knife fight in Eastern Promises, Kirk Douglas found himself naked and wrestling frequently-nude star Harvey Keitel in this sci-fi opus. Douglas was 64 at the time and still built like a boxer. —Gary Susman

MARK WAHLBERG

in Boogie Nights (1997)
There's packing it in, and then there's just plain packing it. Eddie Adams, a.k.a. Dirk Diggler (Wahlberg), might be the central character in this story of a '70s porn star's rise and subsequent drug-fueled fall, but anyone who has seen the film knows who — or rather, what — is the real star of the show. —Adrienne Day

MIKE MYERS and ELIZABETH HURLEY

In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
The Austin Powers series is full of shagadelic jokes that almost go there but stop short, leaving audiences laughing at the nearly naughty scenes. In International Man of Mystery's concluding honeymoon scene, the visual double entendres could have erred on the side of stupid, but the perfect comedic timing of Austin (Mike Myers), opening a phone at his groin, and Vanessa (Elizabeth Hurley) holding melons to her chest, keep the sight gags sophisticated. —Lisa Raphael

RUSSELL CROWE

in Hammers Over the Anvil (1993)
The very first scene of this Aussie drama features the 29-year-old Russell Crowe naked, wet, riding a horse, splashing about in a river. What more do you need? —Gary Susman

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

in The Terminator trilogy (1984, 1991, 2003)
Of course, a Terminator from the future would be built like a bodybuilder and feature an Austrian accent. Oh, and of course, his clothes couldn't be sent back in time with him, offering us a prime glimpse of the cybernetic muscleman. Arnold is at his beefy peak in the first Terminator. He's not quite at Mr. Universe level when he time-travels in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. His return to buffness for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, however, made the hearts of many fiftysomething women — including my own mom — flutter. —Christian Blauvelt

DARYL HANNAH

in Splash (1984)
If a woman who looked like Daryl Hannah circa 1984 was spotted wandering wet and naked around the base of the Statue of Liberty, you bet it would become a media circus, even if she wasn't a mermaid. —Gary Susman

GRAHAM CHAPMAN

in Life of Brian (1979)
Waking up the morning after sleeping with a beautiful revolutionary, Brian steps out of bed in his birthday suit and opens his window to greet the morning, unaware that all of Jerusalem is below, awaiting a sign from their supposed messiah. This was not the revelation they were expecting. —Gary Susman

THE OLD GALS

in Calendar Girl (2003)
If a year's subscription to Cosmopolitan can't inspire you to love your body at any age, then add Calendar Girls to your Netflix queue. Based on a true story, the movie stars a gaggle of mature gals — including the ever GILF-y Helen Mirren — putting together a nudie fund-raiser calendar. —Lisa Raphael

The Full Monty (1997)

Talk about underdogs. Six out-of-work, out-of-shape, and out-of-luck blue-collar Brits finally make good when they perform an impressively agile striptease in front of a packed house. Our only complaint? Moviegoers only got to see the full monty from the backside. —Dawnie Walton

WILL FERRELL

in Old School (2003)
We have the fellas of Old School to thank for a whole new drinking vernacular in the 2000s. Since its debut on the hungover, bloodshot-eyed Animal House scene, we've all been victim to a ''Frank the Tank!'' chant during a boozy night. And for the unlucky ones (come on, people, ''beer before liquor gets you drunk quicker''), you've uttered Will Ferrell's ''We're going STREAKing!'' one more time than you'd like to — or can — remember. —Lisa Raphael

TYLER NILSON

in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)
It wouldn't be a Judd Apatow picture without some casually shocking frontal nudity. In this case, there's a notorious scene where Dewey (John C. Reilly), during a day of typical touring-rocker excess, is confronted by a fellow named Bert (Tyler Nilson) asking if he'd like some coffee. That Dewey is sitting, and that Bert is naked, and that his privates are in Dewey's face (and the viewer's) is probably enough to make anyone quit drinking coffee cold turkey. —Gary Susman

JULIAN SANDS, RUPERT GRAVES, and SIMON CALLOW

in A Room With a View (1986)
There are a lot of scenes in mainstream films where women are seen taking delight in their own bodies as they bathe but not too many with men. Here's one, however (and in a supposedly starchy Merchant/Ivory period piece, no less), where Julian Sands, Rupert Graves, and other male skinny-dippers frolic in a pond, unabashedly bouncing up and down in full-frontal glory. Sexy or just silly, it's a moment of pure joy. —Gary Susman

CHARLTON HESTON

in Planet of the Apes (1968)
Well, usually, when human scientists examine monkeys in a lab, the monkeys are naked, so turnabout is fair play when it's the apes poking at sweaty, wild-eyed savage beast Charlton Heston. —Gary Susman

DIANE KEATON

in Something's Gotta Give (2003)
It's only a fleeting glimpse, and it's played for PG-13 laughs, but when Erica Barry (Diane Keaton) takes a naked nighttime stroll through her house, and is surprised by recuperating houseguest Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson), it's enough to shake the aging lothario's interest in gals under 30 — and to prove that the 57-year-old Keaton has still got it. —Gary Susman

KATHY BATES

in About Schmidt (2002)
Kathy Bates hasn't been shy about showing her not-a-supermodel's body on screen. She got naked and rolled around in the mud in At Play in the Fields of the Lord, and she's similarly fearless in a scene here where she surprises a hot-tubbing Jack Nicholson by stepping into the Jacuzzi au naturel. Nicholson's grouchy retiree is pretty funny, but the bold Bates steals the movie's biggest laugh. —Gary Susman

SYLVESTER STALLONE

in Demolition Man (1993)
Sylvester Stallone is a human ice sculpture, chiseled as ever, when he's defrosted from a cryogenic sleep in order to fight crime in the future. —Gary Susman

BEVERLY D'ANGELO

in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
With golden hair and hot-mom-next-door good looks, Vacation matriarch Beverly D'Angelo shined as the common man's version of The Graduateesque MILF. After her revealing sudsy shower scene in the cult classic, you can only wonder why the bumbling Clark Griswold was constantly fantasizing about other blond babes. —Lisa Raphael

DAVID KELLY

in Waking Ned Devine (1998)
Oh, those colorful quaint folk in small Irish towns and their wacky antics — blackmail, lottery fraud, and, in the case of Michael O'Sullivan, played by 69-year-old David Kelly, racing around town naked on a motorcycle. —Gary Susman