Anne Hathaway vividly recalls the first time she made out with Jake Gyllenhaal: It was on the set of 2005's "Brokeback Mountain," in which the actress played the neglected wife of Gyllenhaal's smitten gay cowboy, and they were filming a steamy tryst in the back of a car.
"Jake had touched me everywhere except my boob," says Hathaway, patting her chest as the pair sits together to discuss their new film, the romantic dramedy "Love & Other Drugs," which opened Wednesday. "We did it very methodically: I would cover. They'd bring me a towel. I'd get out of the car, go behind a screen and get redressed. All of a sudden, I hear a throat clear from behind the screen. It's Jake. 'Ah, Annie, so the thing is, in this scene, if it was really you and me in the car, I just think that, you know, ah, can I touch your boob?' "
"And ... I don't think you asked me this time," says Hathaway, turning to her screen partner to tease him about his behavior during the many love scenes they shot for their new project.
"I already asked. Your offer was still good," Gyllenhaal says with a shrug.
It's difficult to watch "Love & Other Drugs," a film about a young couple struggling to build a relationship in the mid-1990s, without being struck by the number of times Hathaway, 28, and Gyllenhaal, 29, are called upon to bare it all for the cameras. It's just not that often that you see two Oscar-nominated actors strip for sex scenes in a mainstream studio movie.
But the nudity, they insist, was never intended to be cheap or exploitative, though the movie's poster captures the actors in playful buff repose. Instead, it was a purposeful effort on the part of the actors and cowriter-director Ed Zwick to go beyond romantic comedy conventions and authentically depict every aspect of young love.
"We wanted to push it," Gyllenhaal says. "One of those avenues was when the sheets come off, you don't cover your breast. You don't cover a part of your body after you've slept with someone you're falling in love with five or six times."
"Love & Other Drugs," adapted from Jamie Reidy's memoir "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman," centers on Gyllenhaal's Jamie Randall, a charming, rakish bachelor with little career direction who falls into the go-go days of pharmaceutical sales just as Viagra is turning into a national phenomenon. Unexpectedly, he falls for Hathaway's Maggie Murdock, a free-spirited artist whose recent diagnosis of Parkinson's disease puts finding a boyfriend last on her to-do list.
"Love & Other Drugs" offered Gyllenhaal the antidote he craved after shooting the high-octane Jerry Bruckheimer-produced "Prince of Persia."
"I was desperate for character interaction, for scenes that were intimate, where I could spend a lot of time talking," he says. "I loved the action and jumping around, but I get a different kind of action in this one."
Hathaway's response to the script was more reserved. She speaks of a complex character who could tip into stereotype if not handled correctly.
"You take a look at a young woman with a disease and there is always the fear that this is going to be the disease-of-the-week film," she says. "I didn't want to make that, for obvious reasons."
Rather, Hathaway tried to reconcile the psychological trauma brought on by the Parkinson's diagnosis with the seemingly liberated artist's bohemian approach to life.
"I wanted to find a way to have a girl who was free-spirited, intelligent, sexually unencumbered," she says. "But I thought it would be very easy to take all those things I just described and turn her into a male fantasy. I wasn't interested in that. I wanted to relate to her as a woman, and I wanted girls to relate to her, too."
The actress, who recently completed the romantic comedy "One Day" says she's now ready for a break from the rom-com genre. "I don't want to focus on romance for a while," Hathaway says. "I think I've exhausted that muscle."
"I was desperate for character interaction, for scenes that were intimate, where I could spend a lot of time talking," he says. "I loved the action and jumping around, but I get a different kind of action in this one."
Hathaway's response to the script was more reserved. She speaks of a complex character who could tip into stereotype if not handled correctly.
"You take a look at a young woman with a disease and there is always the fear that this is going to be the disease-of-the-week film," she says. "I didn't want to make that, for obvious reasons."
Rather, Hathaway tried to reconcile the psychological trauma brought on by the Parkinson's diagnosis with the seemingly liberated artist's bohemian approach to life.
"I wanted to find a way to have a girl who was free-spirited, intelligent, sexually unencumbered," she says. "But I thought it would be very easy to take all those things I just described and turn her into a male fantasy. I wasn't interested in that. I wanted to relate to her as a woman, and I wanted girls to relate to her, too."
The actress, who recently completed the romantic comedy "One Day" says she's now ready for a break from the rom-com genre. "I don't want to focus on romance for a while," Hathaway says. "I think I've exhausted that muscle."
