A shirtless Jeff Goldblum to Jennifer Lopez: The sexiest scenes in cinema

From a stripper attempting to seduce a convenience store clerk, to a shirtless Jeff Goldblum, to Timothée Chalamet and that peach, Hollywood has delivered us countless sexy scenes.

Some feel natural: they feature in highly charged erotic thrillers or romantic dramas. Others, like the aforementioned Goldblum scene, pop up unannounced in film otherwise focused on dinosaurs.

To celebrate the release of the third film in the definitely very sexy Magic Mike series, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, our team of sexy-cinema experts have curated a very special list of the hottest scenes in movies.

Joe Manganiello’s convenience store dance in Magic Mike XXL

Yes, the just-released Magic Mike film features a dance between Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek that is the closest you can come to sex without taking your pants off. I’m also aware of every scene in this franchise featuring Genuwine’s Pony. But I maintain the sexiest moment – and one of the greatest scenes in cinema full stop – is Big Dick Richie’s goofy convenience store strip-tease in Magic Mike XXL.

Desperate to get his groove back by making the uninterested woman behind the counter smile, Joe Manganiello’s character pulls out all the stops. He dramatically pops a pack of Cheetos, pours water on his head, and humps the ground in time with the Backstreet Boys’ 1999 hit I Want It That Way – all while maintaining eye contact. It’s extremely silly.

But that’s what makes it hot. I challenge you to find a man more shameless, more jacked, and so wholly, full-bodily committed to a woman’s pleasure. Meg Watson

The Pool Scene™ in Wild Things

The ’90s was the golden age for the erotic thriller, but no film was more erotic or thrilling than John McNaughton’s Wild Things. Matt Dillon plays a high school guidance counsellor who cooks up a twisted extortion scheme with two of his students, Neve Campbell and Denise Richards. The trio are actually in a polyamorous relationship (how progressive!) but it’s all rather toxic, and quite a few people end up dead.

The premise is shaky at best, problematic at worse, but the film is best remembered (by me and a horde of other too-ashamed-to-admit-it former teens) for The Pool Scene™. After a violent underwater fight, Campbell and Richards end up making out in the pool. It’s a scene that features slow-motion undressing and a healthy amount of side boob. This arrived at a time in my life when all of those elements – kissing, side boob, pools – were high on my list of interests, so rightly or wrongly, it belongs on this list. Thomas Mitchell

Susan Sarandon’s undeadly seduction in The Hunger

Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve on the set of The Hunger, directed by Tony Scott. Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images

Decency would dictate that uber-rich New Yorker Miriam Blaylock might spend more than a day or two grieving her hubby of 200-odd years, but insatiability lies at the heart of this 1983 vampire flick. No sooner has the oh-so-stylish Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) parked not-quite-dead John (David Bowie) into his forever coffin upstairs than she’s lured another sucker (get it?) into her tastefully decorated Manhattan boudoir.

When wide-eyed gerontologist Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon) spills that blood-red sherry onto her classic white T, the ensuing laundry crisis finds her stripped off and spread out in a soft-focus seduction scene that comes (ahem) with posh bed linen, billowy curtains and a Ravel soundtrack. The dalliance turns undeadly when her seductress sinks the fangs, adding Sarah to a long list of recruits who found that “forever and ever” has its downsides. If you weren’t around for the era of whopping shoulder pads, throbbing nightclubs and conspicuous excess, here’s your chance to drink up. Lindy Percival

Timothée Chalamet gets intimate with a peach in Call Me By Your Name

Elio (Timothée Chalamet) dreaming of that peach in Call Me By Your Name.Credit: Sony Pictures Classics via AP

It was only when I saw Call Me By Your Name that I realised I’d never feel the same way about anything as Elio (Timothée Chalamet) feels about his peach. Not since James, who actually lived inside a giant peach, has anyone been so intimate with the furry fruit.

Some may think this scene is far too sticky to be truly sexy (I probably should have picked the Atonement library scene, but it just felt too on brand) – and it gets even messier when you consider Oliver, the other peach player, is acted by Armie Hammer.

However, I do think it’s important not to let this scene fade from the popular imagination because we’re experiencing a stone fruit shortage in Australia and it might be all the farmers need to slow down sales. Life can’t be all peaches and cream. Melanie Kembrey

Jeff Goldblum bare-chested in Jurassic Park

There are few scenes in cinematic history sexier than an almost shirtless, injured Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in the original Jurassic Park. The iconic moment doesn’t arrive until quite late in the film, but our thirst is quenched by little droplets along the way – much like the one he places on Ellie Sattler’s (Laura Dern) hand as he explains chaos theory in his sultry, soothing voice.

Malcolm finds himself bare-chested after trying to save kids from a T-Rex (dramatic, I know), and I’m sure some evolutionary scientist would argue I’m conditioned to find this attractive because of an innate desire to find a mate who can protect and provide. But it’s so much more than that. As he lies injured, sweating, panting, chest-baring all, while the team tries to escape the terrors of the velociraptors, there’s something that even I – a 25-year-old lesbian – can’t help but find irresistible. Billie Eder

The R-rated opening of Betty Blue (aka 37° 2 le Matin)

Jean-Hugues Anglade and Beatrice Dalle in a (fully-dressed) scene from Betty Blue.Credit: Constellation Productions/Cargo Films

It was 1986, I was just discovering arthouse cinema, and Betty Blue’s opening scene blew my tiny mind. Jean-Jacques Beineix’s tale of a doomed romance opens with a slow dolly towards a young couple (Jean-Hugues Anglade and Beatrice Dalle) going hard at it. Occasionally, she pleasures herself, and as they, and the two-minute sex scene, edge towards climax, Anglade’s character says in a voice-over: “I had known Betty for a week. We made love every night. The forecast was for storms”.

Then as now, it’s both bold and utterly conservative. Even as it celebrates Betty’s shame-free embrace of sexual desire, it sets it up as the flipside to the mental illness that will eventually consume her. Yes, it’s kinda problematic. But it’s still hot as f---. Karl Quinn

Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger’s food foreplay in 9 ½ weeks

I encountered the erotic food scene from the film 9 1/2 weeks repeatedly, and completely out of context. It was the early 1990s, and I was working in a club whose DJ was obsessed with it. Every Friday night, when he fired up Ride On Time, he played that scene on the big screen. Only much later did I find out it was part of a movie.

The scene sees Wall Street manipulator John (Mickey Rourke) and Elizabeth (Kim Basinger), the woman he’s directing his mind games at, sitting on the kitchen floor, bathed in the light of an open refrigerator.

It’s a game: she has to keep her eyes closed and eat whatever he puts in her mouth: cherries, strawberries, fusilli, a jalapeno pepper. Then she guzzles milk and he smears honey all over her thighs.

It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s got it all: teasing, giggling, dripping, smearing. And jelly. There’s a lot of sex (and cruelty) in 9 1/2 weeks, but this scene celebrates fun, foreplay and erotic tension. Michael Bachelard

The sexy fight in Mr and Mrs Smith

This scene makes for more uncomfortable viewing now than it did in 2005, considering the subsequent abuse allegations Angelina Jolie has made against Brad Pitt. But if you focus on the characters alone, the iconic fight between Mr and Mrs Smith – two married undercover assassins trying to kill each other – is undeniably sexy. It comes armed with needlessly large guns, explosions and a sweaty fist-fight between two objectively attractive people.

Beyond that, there’s also something titillating about the total destruction of domesticity – the perfectly stocked fridge, the spotless dining room, the “everything in its place” of it all. The Smiths punch, shoot, and ultimately do the deed on top of old-school virtues, leaving them as destroyed as the house itself. You’ll finish the scene fanning yourself while also re-thinking any outmoded ideals you may still be shackled with. Now that’s sexy. Nell Geraets

J. Lo and George Clooney in Out of Sight

George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Is that not enough? Ok how’s this: he’s a fugitive bank robber on the run and she’s the federal agent tasked with chasing him down. Still not convinced? They meet in a hotel bar and roleplay as two people who don’t know each other, going through the ritual of a first date before Clooney’s character starts philosophising on love at first sight and missed opportunities. The camera alternates between shots of the pair flirting as the sexual tension slowly ratchets up, and shots of them undressing later in the evening. We know how the night ends but it’s the build-up, not the climax, that makes this such a tantalising scene. Osman Faruqi

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