Emily Browning on Sleeping Beauty: Vodka, Cigarettes, and Staying Completely Still [PICS]

Emily Browning gives a fearless performance in her nude debut, Sleeping Beauty (2011), but as she tells Movieline, seeing the movie with an audience had her quaking in her boots:

"I was meant to see it for the first time at Cannes. I said to my publicist, 'I can’t do it. I need to see it before them, because I might pass out.' It was the most nerve-wracking experience," Emily said when asked her reaction to seeing Sleeping Beauty.

"So they gave me a copy, and I watched it in bed with a bottle of vodka by myself because I was so nervous. But I was really happy with it, and it’s so rare for me to feel that about a film…It was what I wanted it to be." But the official premiere was another story:

"Watching it at Cannes was a different experience — with the huge screen, thinking, 'Wow, I’m this giant naked person, and there are thousands of people looking at me'…I was sweating profusely and gripping onto [director] Julia [Leigh]’s hand and kind of shaking a little bit."

But you'd never know all this watching the film, especially in the scene where Emily remains completely still while being dragged around and burned with cigarettes by a client known as "Man #2" (above), a scene that took an astounding 14 takes to film:

"When he burns my neck with the cigarette, I had prosthetic skin on my neck. But still, when a cigarette’s coming toward your skin, you wince…It’s tough to not pull away from that kind of thing," she says. So how did she deal?:

"Early on, Julia suggested that I learn to meditate. So that’s what I did — just kind of focusing on my breathing, and I had words I was saying in my head. It was just about being as still as possible. And I think in a way, doing those kinds of nude scenes that are really intense, it was actually kind of easier that I was asleep."

Emily goes on to defend the film against accusations of sexism, explaining that her character's "radical passivity" is her way of dealing with objectification and that, after all, sex workers are people too:

"I believe that a portrayal of [sex work]— I don’t think that’s automatically going to be innately sexist...because that profession in itself — when it’s all done in a way that should be done, and everyone has rights and it’s safe — is a necessary and honorable profession."

Mr. Skin members can see more from Emily Browning right here at MrSkin.com!