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The 69 Sexiest Film Scenes of All Time

Sixty-nine times the big screen caught on fire

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Illustration by Allison Aubrey

    This list of the 69 Best Movie Sex Scenes was originally published in 2022 for Consequence’s Sex in Cinema Week, and has been updated and expanded for Valentine’s Day 2025. 


    In exploring the concept of Sex in Cinema, we here at Consequence felt that it made sense to include a celebration of film’s greatest achievements when it comes to capturing the complicated concept of human sexuality. There’s one catch, of course: You, gentle reader, are not going to agree 100 percent with this list.

    And that’s okay! No one will ever agree 100 percent all the time on what makes a particular scene sexy, as sexiness is ultimately a subjective quality. What we are attempting here, though, is to celebrate not just the most obvious moments of eroticism that have been featured on the big screen since the dawn of cinema, but to consider all possible definitions of titillating.

    That means that in compiling options, we did not require that the scene in question include explicit nudity or sexual content; in certain contexts, after all, an illicit touching of hands or a stolen dance can be just as charged and intense as two (or more) people going at it hard. Though don’t worry — there are plenty of examples of the latter here as well.

    Drawing from a century’s worth of film means accepting that some of these sequences might not have been filmed using the kinds of standards that modern-day intimacy coordinators oversee on today’s sets. However, films like Last Tango in Paris, where at least one participant has since called out a lack of consent on set, were removed from consideration. Because knowing that a scene was a violation is just not sexy.

    Again, what is sexy is up to the individual. However, what we can embrace on a universal level is that the best films, across the board, do what they can to say something about human nature, and sex is an intrinsic part of that nature. It’s how the vast majority of us arrived on this planet, after all. And it’s a fun way to pass the time, while we’re lucky enough to be here.

    Liz Shannon Miller
    Senior Entertainment Editor


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