10 Hot Underwear Scenes
When being almost naked in the movies is teasingly good
Baring your undies as a prelude to sex is a nice way to get things cooking. But in many of these scenes, the exposure is in a different context: moments of repose, fantasy, suspense, or letting oneself go. For us, the viewer, it’s all good.
Tom Cruise in Risky Business (1983)
Before he’s up to no good with a bevy of prostitutes, a Chicago high-school senior gets down all by his lonesome in this legendary scene, with a little help from Bob Seger and a candlestick. Who’d have thought that such a small pair of briefs could launch such a huge career?
Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation (2003)
No need to fast-forward for this one: Sofia Coppola hooks us immediately by placing a lovely rear at the very front of this heady and cerebral romantic dramedy. Although viewers often get itchy during slow starts, as you watch Charlotte, a lonely young wife in Japan, in her translucent pink underwear, lethargically stir herself awake, you can’t help but want her to take her sweet time.
Clint Eastwood in Play Misty For Me (1971)
As taut as this early Eastwood-directed thriller might be, one of its most exciting scenes is the one in which Clint, as a DJ who has a fling with a deranged fan, prowls around his apartment wearing little more than a pair of tighty whities and a concerned look.
Charlize Theron in 2 Days in the Valley (1996)
In her first speaking role in the movies, Theron, a then-unknown 21-year-old South African model, made a lasting impression with much more than her line delivery. When her character, the Norwegian girlfriend of a double-crossing hitman (James Spader), enters the drab motel room in white lace negligee that is practically see-through, and spreads her legs on the foot of the bed, we don’t blame him for needing to thrust some ice down his pants.
Sophia Loren in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963)
Why cast three different women for three different parts when you can just have Sophia play all three? For director Vittorio De Sica, the answer was clear. Although she wows us in all of the movie’s vignettes, our favorite moment is undoubtedly the one where she slowly slinks out of her robe, stockings, garter, and lace babydoll dress as Marcello Mastroianni understandably howls like a wolf.
Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
It is only fitting that in a scene in which Alice Harford lays bare her deepest yearnings and sexual fantasies, she and her husband (played by Nicole’s then-husband, Tom Cruise) are wearing next to nothing at all. Although the film—Stanley Kubrick’s last—has been preserved in the Library of Congress, it’s a crime that Nicole’s white halter bodysuit isn’t there with it.
Halle Berry in Swordfish (2001)
Though her more infamous—and gratuitous—topless scene in this film garnered more buzz (and bucks for Berry), the scene in which she is found wearing a wire by Hugh Jackman is more tantalizing. After all, how many plot twists get completely overshadowed by how damn good someone looks in black lacy lingerie?
Catherine Deneuve in Belle de jour (1967)
In this dissection of bourgeois decadence from Luis Buñuel, a prim and proper housewife turns her wildest fantasies into reality by prostituting herself. In this scene, after struggling mightily with her first, gruff john, the elegant and ethereal Séverine, clad in only a white demi-cup and garter, finally relents and lets the man, and her desires, take hold of her.
Chris Pine, Zoë Saldana and Rachel Nichols in Star Trek (2009)
As young Captain Kirk hooks up with a verdant alien vixen in a skimpy pair of boxer briefs, you can tell that he’s just as excited as we are, if not more. And if that pairing weren’t enough, Uhura arrives and disrobes as well.
Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman in Black Swan (2010)
Dostoevskian doubles have never collided so scrumptiously as when rival ballerinas set aside their differences and clothes and begin to get it on in this moment that is surreal, creepy, and titillating all at once.
