Sex in Hollywood Meets the Playboy Interview

A collection of confessions from our most candid conversations

Francis Coppola--July 1975

[Q] Playboy: A lot of men in the movie industry use their power and their status as celebrities to play around sexually. Have you ever been tempted along those lines?

[A] Coppola: I'd like to point out that it's not only the men who play around, as you put it. I know a female casting executive who uses her position just as a man might. It's incredible how this woman operates. She uses her position to keep five or six men going at one time and she's just as exploitive of her position as any man might be.

[Q] Playboy: Pardon us for mentioning it, but you didn't really answer our question about playing around. Would you rather not?

[A] Coppola: What can I say? I love women. I can be walking down the street with my wife, and I'll see a beautiful woman and I'll pat my wife on the shoulder and say, "Hey, look at her!" But to some extent, the myth about famous movie directors' being pursued by women is not quite accurate. For one thing, there's so little time and so much work to be done. I once asked one of my assistants, who's always with beautiful girls, how he met so many of them. He said, "Easy; I tell them I'm going to introduce them to you." But he never does.

Henry Winkler--August 1977

[Q] Playboy: What are some of the things women say to you?

[A] Winkler: "I want to see you later." "Give me your hotel key." You know, "I want to sit on you." But what happens is that you can't go for it. It's very empty. I've had my share, you understand. I'm not saying that I cannot do it. There have been times on the road when I've lived the sort of life I used to read about in the orthodontist's office when I was 13 years old. You know: chicks knocking on my door at six in the morning; I open it up and there's this beautiful girl going, "Hi, are you asleep?" "No, actually, I'm writing out the Magna Charta from memory." Am I asleep? It's six o'clock in the morning! So I just go, "Now that you're here, why don't you just come in?"

[Q] Playboy: Does that sort of thing put pressure on you to perform like a sexual athlete?

[A] Winkler: If I had done everybody I was supposed to have done just in this town, it would have fallen off a long time ago.

John Travolta--December 1978

[Q] Playboy: You obviously encounter your share of groupies. Have you ever taken advantage?

[A] Travolta: No, there are enough people I already know that I'm attracted to. I don't pick up strangers.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have a girlfriend?

[A] Travolta: A couple.

[Q] Playboy: We're still amazed that you haven't just grabbed---

[A] Travolta: I've been grabbed.

[Q] Playboy: Has success changed your sexual attitudes or habits?

[A] Travolta: I've probably become a little freer. I guess I feel like I'm OK. Maybe I'm more in tune with expressing myself sexually. But who cares? If you really think about it, do you spend a whole lot of time thinking about stars' sex lives. I just don't I may fantasize having sex with someone, though.

[Q] Playboy: Whom have you had sexual fantasies about?

[A] Travolta: Well, Jane Fonda, for one. I don't necessarily like to think of Jane Fonda's sex life, but I may like to think of having sex with Jane Fonda.... You have a lot of sex in this interview, don't you?

Jack Nicholson--April 1972

[A] Nicholson: The fact that I'm fulfilled in other areas makes me feel less compelled to find ego gratification through seduction or conquest. Therefore, if I see a twist I like walking down the street, I'm not automatically going to go over and say, who's that, what's her phone number, call her up on the phone, how do you do, I'm doing OK, how are you, can I come over. And by the time I'm over there, I'm already coming in my pants. I don't have that experience anymore. I've had it ... I'm not after all the women anymore. That's a definite change. I've had days in my life, or three or four days at a time, or weeks, when I've been with more than four women. I found that to be an internal lie.... It's unrealist--like going for some record.

Roman Polanski--December 1971

[A] Polanski: I found out I like sex. How about that? I like fucking.... I separate love from sex. For many people, fornication is immoral. Strangely enough, it seems supremely moral to me to have sex with a girl I've met in the harbor at St.-Tropez. Sex is beautiful. No one gets hurt. Just the opposite. It's simple, isn't it? So if it's true that I'm a playboy, it's only in this respect. The rest of being a playboy doesn't have much attraction for me.

[Q] Playboy; Does it ever bother you that some people are more interested in your image as a playboy than in your films?

[A] Polanski: I think it's great.

[Q] Playboy: Wouldn't you rather be known as a film director whose personal life is of little curiosity?

Polanski: Do you mean like Walt Disney? My only disappointment is that people created this conception of me as a decadent man of excess without my active participation.... I prefer to seem frivolous, a guy who socializes all the time. For one thing. I realized that this reputation helps me in my relations with women. I've noticed that as my reputation grows worse, my success with women increases.

Raquel Welch--January 1970

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you ever tempted to pursue extramarital affairs when you're separated from your husband by professional commitments?

[A] Welch: On 100 Rifles, it was obvious that members of the crew were pairing off. In fact, it seemed as if they'd just discovered fucking when they got to Spain. But when I'm working 16 hours a day on location, I don't lie awake pining for romance--I just work hard.... It's taken for granted by the public that because you do a love scene with someone, you're balling him offscreen. To them, all actresses get screwed left, right and center, front and back--all the way to the top and then all the way back to the bottom. That may be the way a lot of actresses play it, and I don't really give a damn, but I hate to get junked in with all the rest. These girls get the mistaken idea that the only way to succeed in this town is to ball the right people; to me that seems like a pretty bleak way to live. Is it really worth it to bang a bunch of people you're not interested in, just to get your face on the screen? An actress might chart a path to the top, marking the way with people she ought to sleep with; but if she's that cold and calculating about sex, she's not really having sex; she's just doing business. I see it happening all around me.