'Don't Look Now' star: Sex scene was NOT real

Evans/Grant/Everett

'Don't Look Now' love scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie was not real, the former says. He claims Peter Bart did not witness the filming.

Donald Sutherland is slamming Peter Bart's assertion that the actor and Julie Christie engaged in real sex in a graphic love making scene from the 1973 film "Don't Look Now."

The Hollywood Reporter obtained an advanced copy of the former Variety editor's book, "Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob, (and Sex)," which claims the author was on the 1973 film's set and saw the two actors engaging in real copulation, a claim Sutherland calls "mendacious."

"Not true. None of it. Not the sex. Not him witnessing it," the 75-year-old actor told the Daily News in an email sent via his rep.

Sutherland, who was married to Francine Racette at the time of filming -- Christie was dating Warren Beatty who reportedly requested that the graphic scene be edited out -- said that only he, Christie, director Nicolas Roeg and cinematographer Anthony Richmond were in the room at the time the scene was shot.

"From beginning to end there were four people in that room. No one else," he said. "Wires under the locked door led out side and this was twenty years before video monitors."

In his book, Bart, a Paramount Pictures executive at the time, recounted his mind drifting off as he started watching the intimate moments between Sutherland and Christie.�

When Bart snapped back to attention, he claimed the actors were naked.

"It was clear to me they were no longer simply acting: they were [having sex] on camera," Bart wrote (though in considerably more graphic detail).

In the final version of the film, the lovemaking ? which includes a controversial oral sex scene -- is intercut with scenes of Sutherland and Christie getting dressed to go out to dinner, which was reportedly Roeg?s attempt to accommodate censors at the time.

"Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob, (and Sex)" hits shelves on May 3.�

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