The actress claims René Clément made the request during the filming of 1964 thriller Joy House.
ADVERTISEMENTJane Fonda has revealed that a French film director once asked if he could have sex with her “to see what my orgasms were like” before she filmed a sex scene.
The legendary Hollywood star made the revelation when she appeared on the Bravo talk show 'Watch What Happens Live'.
When host Andy Cohen asked her to name “one man in Hollywood that tried to pick you up once that you turned down”, she named director René Clément, one of France’s most prolific filmmakers in the 1950s and '60s.
She alleged that during the making of the 1964 thriller 'Joy House' he "wanted to go to bed with me because he said the character had to have an orgasm in the movie and he needed to see what my orgasms were like. He said it in French and I pretended I didn’t understand”.
“I have stories for you, kid, [but] we don’t have time,” she added.
Fonda was 27 years old when she starred in the film opposite Alain Delon and Lola Albright. Clément was 51 at the time of the film’s release; He died in 1996 at the age of 82.
Fonda’s comments come during a wave of scrutiny of the French film industry during the Cannes film festival. It follows high-profile allegations of sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood since the #Metoo movement went viral in 2017.
Earlier this month, 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' actor Adèle Haenel published an open letter announcing she was leaving the film business, claiming that Cannes are “ready to do anything to defend their rapist chiefs”. Thierry Frémaux, the director of the film festival, refuted the claims, saying they were, "false" and "erroneous".
