Anatomy of a Nude Scene: 'Sirens' May Be Plural, But All Eyes Were On Elle MacPherson

In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Nude Scene, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, Elle MacPherson knocks every guy's dick in the dirt with her incredible nude debut in 1994's Sirens!

If you came of age in the 80s or early 90s, Elle MacPherson was undoubtedly one of your dream girls. She became the face of several major advertising campaigns before gracing the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue for three consecutive years from 1986 to 1988. This exposure saw her plastered all over the walls of many a young man's room, making her one of the first "supermodels" with universal name recognition. In the days before the internet, however, it was a lot harder to find nude pics of supermodels, so even though she had surely shown off her body at some fashion shows and the like, those pictures weren't exactly accessible to the vast majority of folks.

This made the prospect of her prominent role in the 1994 flick Sirens so enticing to many people as it would feature Elle baring all, though she undercut it slightly by posing for a Playboy pictorial in May of that same year, after the film had wrapped, but before it saw international release. Even still, moving images are worth a stills, so men the world over held their collective breath in anticipation of this quirky little indie Australia/UK co-production.

Sirens tells the story of an EnglishAnglican priestnamed Tony (Hugh Grant) who is assigned to a parish in New South Wales Australia near the home of famed painter Norman Lindsay (Sam Neill). Lindsay has caused a lot of controversy with the church over his provocative and often blasphemous artwork, but rather than finding a zealous madman, they find him to be a progressive lover of life, living a bohemian lifestyle with his wife Rose (Pamela Rabe), two models named Sheela (MacPherson) and Pru (Kate Fischer), their maid Giddy (Portia de Rossi), and a half-blind handyman namedDevlin(Mark Gerber), all of whom pose—often nude—for his paintings.

Tony and his wife Estella (Tara Fitzgerald) at first seem repulsed by their way of living, but soon Estella begins to experience a sexual awakening while spending time with these free-spirited women. They take her under their wing and begin to broaden her rather sheltered views on the world, leading inevitably to a showdown with her buttoned-down husband after he discovers her likeness among a group of naked women in one of Lindsay's newest paintings.

If you were in the throes of puberty when Sirens hit home video in late 1994, throwing it onwould basicallyturn into a game of whack-a-mole, with a wide variety of naked women to suit whatever tastes you may have had at the moment. However, for as amazing as Kate Fischer, Portia de Rossi, Pamela Rabe, and Tara Fitzgerald look naked, it was hard to deny that Elle MacPherson stole your gaze. She was the living embodiment of the so-called "ideal woman" with her big breasts, astonishing beauty, and fit but not waifish physique. She was a Greek goddess made flesh and seeing her completely nude only validated the feelings of all the men who had fallen for her when she was wearing a swimsuit.

The film doesn't really have a central protagonist, and around the midway point, it switches from being Tony's story to Estella's story, with her journey being the obvious emotional core of the film. However, MacPherson was front and center in the advertising campaign, often the only person featured on any of the film's posters or VHS cover art. It was clear that directorJohn Duigan and the marketing people at Miramax knew full well what the selling point of their film was, and for once it didn't turn out to be misdirection.

The first time we see MacPherson nude in the film comes just 25 minutes in as sheis skinny dipping with Fischer while de Rossi and Fitzgerald join them at the old swimming hole. Fitzgerald is at first shocked to see the women enjoying a dip in the altogether, but it is the first seed sown for her eventual sexual awakening...

Hugh Grant, himself on the cusp of a breakout year in 1994, said in an interview with The New York Times that MacPherson was the what sealed the deal for him, serving as the gateway to his character's inner life...

"I kept looking at the part and wondered how I could crack it, because he was such a straitlaced character," the actor observes. "And then I realized that if he thought he was trendy and avant-garde, that added a whole new swing to it. I see him as quite the star of his theological college, probably quite daring with his Turkish cigarettes. And I imagine that he even makes the occasional sexual reference in his conversation after a couple of glasses of sherry. But confronted with the real McCoy, in the form of Elle Macpherson without her clothes, he's hopeless."

It's rare that he does so, but in this particular case, I think it's safe to say that Hugh Grant speaks for all men.

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**Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy**