Overview of our 16th annual list: The most dramatic and surprising development of 2014 was not the scene that won, although that was awe-inspiring, but the scene it beat out. Suppose you knew a couple of years ago that Scarlett Johansson would do a completely nude role with several minutes of naked running time and no body doubles, no bad lighting, no CGI, and no other film tricks designed to obscure her private parts. What odds would you have given that such a scene would be chosen as the best and most popular of the year? Astronomical, right? How could anything beat that? Well, something did. The gorgeous Alexandra Daddario, possessing a haunting pair of eyes and a flawlessly sexy body, took off her clothing and exposed every square inch of that flesh in an episode of True Detective. In the process, she managed to relegate the voluptuous Johansson to second place. Bravo, Alexandra! But where can you go from here?

It was refreshing to see so many excellent nude scenes in respected movies. Last year's group came mostly from TV shows, B-films and a music video, but the current crop comes mostly from theatrical releases. Ten of the top thirteen finishers appeared in movies, and not one of those ten films was rated below 6.2 at IMDb. Several of them are considered either Oscar contenders or art house masterpieces. The three TV scenes in that sweet thirteen are no slouches, either. The two highest-ranked TV scenes were in True Detective and Game of Thrones, arguably the two best premium cable shows of the year.

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I kept the list at 25 scenes this year, because: (1) it was a natural break point in the balloting; (2) hey, it's five more scenes to look at, and nobody's going to object to that.







25 Alison Sudol in "Transparent"

season one

Many years ago, Alison acted under the name of Alison Monro. Today, 30-year-old Alison Sudol, aka A Fine Frenzy, is not really an actress at all. She's a singer-songwriter, pianist, and environmental advocate, and is writing a Narnia-inspired children's book in her spare time.



She did this scene in the pilot for Transparent, and she appeared (clothed) in some other episodes, but it's not clear whether she'll pursue any serious resumption of her acting career at this point.







24 Cameron Diaz in Sex Tape 5.1 at IMDb, 18% positive reviews

Cameron Diaz bared her breasts in a cheap, sleazy, almost homemade film when she was a young woman, and that has been well traveled through the internet, but she has not really done any nudity in "official" films. There are two or three films where her nipple has appeared in a downblouse or something similar, but this role, lensed when she was in her 40s, was the first time we've seen her butt.



She certainly had no reason to keep it hidden. There are not many women in their 40s whose butts would look better than that!



23 Charlotte Gainsbourg in Nymphomaniac 7.1 at IMDb, 75% positive reviews I will be honest and say that I would have cast my own vote for this performance if everything had been real, despite the fact that I am no real fan of 43-year-old Charlotte Gainsbourg. The performance appears to go beyond what any other established actress has ever done on screen. For example, Gainsbourg seems to do a double penetration scene with her face clearly in the shot. Unfortunately, everything was not real. The nastiest scenes were completed by using CGI, prosthetics, and body doubles.



22 Elizabeth Olsen in Oldboy 5.7 at IMDb, 42% positive reviews

The ranking of this scene suffered because the film was a tweener. It was released around Thanksgiving time in 2013, but Elizabeth's nude scenes were not familiar to our voters until after last year's balloting. By the time this year's balloting rolled around, the film had more or less disappeared from our immediate recall.



21 Trieste Kelly Dunn in "Banshee" season two

In 2010 she was named one of the "25 New Faces Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine, despite the fact that she was 29 years old and her acting credits dated back to the mid-90s.



And Rodney Dangerfield thought HE got no respect.



One thing is certain - people recognize her now, although mostly clad in a police uniform.



20 Lizzy Caplan in "Masters of Sex " season two

Lizzy also made last year's list (sixth place) for her nude performances in season one. The drop in rank is simply because the novelty has worn off. Neither Lizzy's beauty nor the quality of her nudity has diminished.



19 Britt Robertson in Ask Me Anything

6.0 at IMDb, 50% at Rotten Tomatoes

There were rumors that the Disney folks were not pleased with Britt's decision to appear in this film as a promiscuous blogger. Ya see, Britt will co-star with George Clooney in Disney's big-budget Tomorrowland, which will be released to kick off the summer blockbuster season in May of 2015, and the Mouse-house supposedly didn't think that Britt needed to dilute a career break like that by starring in a raunchy indie film. (Both Disney and Britt's people are denying the rumor, but the director of Ask Me Anything is finding Britt unresponsive to calls for help with promotion.)



18 Keri Russell in "The Americans" season two

Keri doesn't have a lot of meat on her bones, but what she does have is A-1 prime. And damned if she doesn't do some dark, kinky stuff on this show for a Mouseketeer!



This role is a real outlier from the predicted path of her career nudity arc. She turned 18 some twenty years ago, and in all that time had never exposed her butt, and had only exposed one breast from the side for a split second back in 1997.



I, for one, applaud her change of heart.



17 Ellin Dorrit Petersen in Blind 7.2 at IMDb, 100% positive reviews This dramedy has been universally praised by critics as a taut, compact masterpiece. Although Ellen is 39 and has few film credits at IMDb (none at all in the period before her 33rd birthday, when she seems to have acted exclusively on stage), she has received rave reviews for her performance as a woman who loses her sight abruptly because of some unspecified condition.



I'll add a thumb up for the frontal nudity as well.



16 Olivia Wilde in Third Person 6.4 at IMDb, 23% positive reviews Olivia has not done much additional nudity since her naked debut in Alpha Dog back in 2006, and none at all in proper lighting. She did a dimly lit topless scene in Deadfall, flashed an ever-so-brief nighttime peek at her butt in Cowboys and Aliens, and took a dark nighttime skinny dip in Drinking Buddies.



It's good to see her back in the light again!





15 Olivia Cheng in "Marco Polo"

season one

You would think that a full-frontal and rear nude appearance from a lovely woman in a much-ballyhooed big-budget Netflix spectacular would rate higher than 15th place.



Why didn't it? Well, for one thing, the series was a dud; for another, Olivia has no curves and in some shots she seemed to be ... well ... older than expected. Her age seems to be a secret guarded more closely than Fort Knox or the Crown Jewels, but whatever the correct number is, it's not an especially low one.



Having noted all that, I must note that the particular scene in the clip, involving naked martial arts, is one of the best damned nude scenes ever!



14 Lola Naymark in Au Fil d'Ariane

5.8 at IMDb, 100% positive reviews





I do know from Charlie's French Cinema Nudity site that the freckled actress has been naked in many earlier films, dating back to 2006: a breast in Faux Coupable; a breast in La Promeneuse d' Oiseaux; a breast in Comme un Mauvais Souvenir; both breasts in Dans Tes Bras; and the full monty in L'Armee du Crime

I don't know a damned thing about this obscure movie. I'm not the only one in that predicament. As I type these words, there is only one review at Rotten Tomatoes and there are a mere 66 votes at IMDb. But I did see the film clips, so I have no quarrel with the ranking.I do know fromsite that the freckled actress has been naked in many earlier films, dating back to 2006: a breast in Faux Coupable; a breast in La Promeneuse d' Oiseaux; a breast in Comme un Mauvais Souvenir; both breasts in Dans Tes Bras; and the full monty in L'Armee du Crime

13 Eva Green in

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

6.7 at IMDb, 44% positive reviews I would say that Eva is the unquestioned queen of screen nudity in the 21st century.



I chose her work in The Dreamers (early 2003, when she was a spectacular 22) as the best nude performance of the millennium, and she continues to try to top it year after year, although she's now in her mid 30s. This year alone, she had three nude performances on the nomination list: this one, Penny Dreadful, and the 300 sequel.



12 Maaike Neuville in

Goltzius and the Pelican Company 6.8 at IMDb, 75% positive reviews I have always been racked with ambivalence about Peter Greenaway's films. They are always artistic and meticulously storyboarded. Just about any frame could be blown up and hung in an art museum. They are also obsessive, pretentious, and frequently boring.



One thing I must give the guy without reservation: nobody, but nobody, shoots better nude scenes: there is always explicit exposure, almost always performed by gorgeous women (yes, and men), and the setting is always in an impeccable composition of dazzling artistry (and usually symmetry, for that is one of his many obsessions).



Since Charlotte Gainsbourg's scene was basically fake, I cast my own personal ballot for Neuville. It's a gorgeous scene, and she's only one of many beautiful women who appear in this film as naked as they were born.



11 Katherine Waterston in Inherent Vice

7.8 at IMDb, 71% positive reviews

Waterston got completely naked for P.T. Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's offbeat, non-linear novel.

This performance might have fared better in the voting if good pictures had been available by the time of the election. The choices of the voters are not easy to predict (I certainly would not have guessed #3 correctly), but If you scan the next few items on the list, you'll see that this scene probably should have finished somewhere around #7.









10 Reese Witherspoon in Wild 7.5 at IMDb, 92% positive reviews Reese Witherspoon is a major star at 38, and she hasn't done any screen nudity since 1998's Twilight, when she stepped in front of the camera topless at age 21 or 22. That's a long time for a prolific actress (some 25 films between Twilight and Wild) to dodge the nudity bullet, but she finally took the plunge, and it seems to me that she looks just about as good as ever, even though her nude scenes are just brief glimpses in flashback memories.





9 Jessica Chastain in Salome / Wilde Salome

7.3 at IMDb, 80% positive reviews



Jessica is truly a beautiful woman and she really threw herself into this scene with exuberance and passion, but the scene, as erotic as it is, almost seems like a disappointment compared to the hype that preceded it. We've been waiting for it for years. Jessica Chastain was 29 when filming began, but 37 when rights were finally released to VOD.



Al Pacino started filming in 2006 in Ireland, and wrapped principal photography in 2008, so people had been talking about it for eight years before it saw the light of day in 2014, except for a screening at the Venice Festival in 2011, when the buzz around Jessica's topless dance began in earnest.





8 Shailene Woodley in White Bird in a Blizzard

6.6 at IMDb, 48% positive reviews This is a cute scene, but doesn't seem like one that would rate a top ten finish. Its success with voters derived from the fact that Shailene grew up before our eyes in The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and then reached box office stardom in 2014.



She was probably the breakout star of 2014 in terms of financial performance. Divergent was a hit, grossing $150 million in the U.S. and another $140 million elsewhere. A short time later, Woodley starred in a surprise hit, The Fault in Our Stars, which took in $120 million domestically and $180 million overseas - on a budget of only $12 million.



7 Emily Ratajkowski in Gone Girl 8.3 at IMDb, 88% positive reviews This is the second consecutive year in the top ten for the model/actress with a spectacular chest. That's impressive for a woman who was essentially a model and rarely gets any significant screen time.



She was in second place last year for her nude appearance in a Robin Thicke music video.



6 Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street



8.3 at IMDb, 77% positive reviews This is another one of the tween-year entries that probably would have finished even higher if it had clearly belonged to either year (I think Margot would have finished second last year, possibly even first, if the scene had been available before the voting.) The film was a Christmas, 2013 release, but the nude scenes were not seen by our voters in time for the balloting. By the time the 2014 balloting came around, many people had other scenes on their minds. The very fact that this scene finished as high as sixth is a tribute to the beauty and daring of Margot in getting totally naked before Scorsese's lens.



5 Stacy Martin in Nymphomaniac

7.1 at IMDb, 75% positive reviews I suppose this would have been the nude performance of the year if it had been delivered by somebody familiar to the voters before the film was released, and if everything on screen had really been part of Stacy's body. Unfortunately, neither condition was met. Stacy was completely unknown before she was cast in this film, and her performance involved "a porn double and a prosthetic vagina." But even the parts that were real were good enough to merit a powerhouse fifth-place finish in her screen debut.



4 Lili Simmons in "Banshee"

season two She finished 16th on the list last year, for her work in season one!



She's a young one. She has given out two different dates of birth, but they agree on the day, if not the year. She was born either on July 23, 1992 or exactly a year later. I'm not sure when the first season of Banshee was actually lensed, but it first aired in January of 2013, so the filming had to be some time in 2012. She was therefore somewhere between 18 and 20 when she performed her first nude scenes, depending on (1) whether the 2012 filming happened before or after her birthday, and (2) which birth year is correct.



Lili also performed an excellent nude scene this year in an episode of True Detective.



3 Nathalie Emmanuel in "Game of Thrones"

season four

Even I have indulged in this temptation (link leads to spoilers).



It is no wonder, then, that a woman this beautiful on a show with obsessive fans can finish third for the year, losing only to those curvaceous powerhouses, ScarJo and Daddario.

Game of Thrones is probably the most popular cult preoccupation of the 21st century. It inspires fan fiction, obsession, and endless speculation about the ultimate winner of the actual "game."(link leads to spoilers).It is no wonder, then, that a woman this beautiful on a show with obsessive fans can finish third for the year, losing only to those curvaceous powerhouses, ScarJo and Daddario.

2 Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin

6.2 at IMDb, 86% positive reviews Dude, it's ScarJo walking around stark naked during several minutes of screen time.



Do you need more explanation?

