10 Actors Whose Movie Character Requests Got Rejected
4. Scarlett Johansson Wanted To Be Topless For One Scene - The Island
While shooting her lead role in Michael Bay's The Island, Scarlett Johansson had to film a sex scene between her character, Jordan Two-Delta, and male lead Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor).
Johansson was given a black bra to wear for the scene, but felt that her character actually wouldn't be wearing anything, and so suggested to director Bay that she simply shoot the scene topless for a greater sense of realism - ever the important thing in a sci-fi schlock-fest riffing on Logan's Run.
According to Bay, she emphatically declared she wouldn't wear the "cheap-ass bra," while Johansson herself later said, "Nobody wears a bra when they’re in bed... Who wakes up wearing a bra? It doesn’t happen!"
But Bay, constrained by the film's studio-mandated PG-13 rating, had to explain to Johansson that it simply wasn't possible for her to be topless in the movie without an R rating, which would've invoked the wrath of Warner Bros.
And while many fans might lament that Bay didn't acquiesce to Johansson's enthusiastic request, there's absolutely no way a topless scene would've ever made it into the final cut anyway. Bay made the only decision he could under the restriction of a PG-13 rating.