“Don’t knock masturbation,” says Woody Allen’s character in 1977’s Annie Hall. “It’s sex with someone I love.” Despite such sentiment, the movies haven’t generally been comfortable with self-gratification, aside from using it for some good one-liners.
Still, onanism is part of the human experience, and so cinema has not completely ignored it. The first unambiguous masturbation scene in a mainstream film is difficult to pin down, which tells you all you need to know about how long Hollywood kept sex (regardless of the number of participants) behind closed doors.
The flicks below are not listed for their explicitness, but rather for their memorability.
10. Black Swan (2010, dir. Darren Aronofsky)
In one of the more dubious instructions ever given to prepare for a performance of Swan Lake, Black Swan’s innocent, introverted Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is told by her lecherous artistic director (Vincent Cassel) to go home and touch herself. “Live a little,” he suggests. Nina does as she is told, tentatively at first. The moment turns into something far less liberating and far darker—especially after her domineering mother (Barbara Hershey) barges in.
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9. American Beauty (1999, dir. Sam Mendes)
“Look at me, jerking off in the shower,” Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) tells us in voice-over. And sure enough, there he is masturbating onscreen, partly obscured (thankfully) by the shower stall door. It is a provocative opening for Sam Mendes’ American Beauty, the apex of white, male, middle-class, suburban despair. “This will be the high point of my day,” Lester continues. “It’s all downhill from here.” Considering he is a dead man narrating, it’s fair to say Lester is correct.
(See more in The 10 best films about voyeurism.)
8. The Lighthouse (2019, dir. Robert Eggers)
The suffocating isolation of lighthouse life breeds constant self-abuse by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as lighthouse keepers in the grimly comic The Lighthouse. Robert Eggers holds nothing back, whether the subject is flatulence, madness or vigorous solo recreation. “On day one we shot Rob masturbating in the shed—it’s the very first thing we shot—and Rob really, really went for it,” Eggers told The Daily Beast. “It was inspiring.”
7. Call Me by Your Name (2017, dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Luca Guadagnino’s tale of sexual awakening is lyrical, sensuous, and—in at least one transgressively memorable scene—peachy keen. During a momentous summer in Northern Italy, teenager Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet) falls for Oliver (Armie Hammer), an American graduate student staying with the Perlman family. The attraction unfolds with longing and torrid curiosity. Such sensuality inevitably leads to Elio’s intimacy with a peach, creating one of the most infamous moments in modern arthouse cinema.
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6. Poor Things (2023, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
In the fantastical comedy Poor Things, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is ravenous to experience everything she can about life. Decorum, however, isn’t one of those things. The literal creation of a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe), Bella has the mind of a child implanted in the body of a woman. So when she discovers self-pleasure, there’s no stopping her—regardless of who happens to be around. “Bella discover happy when she want!” she exclaims. Stone delivers a gleefully fearless performance as the uninhibited Bella in Yorgos Lanthimos’ poke in the eye to bourgeois society.
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5. Pleasantville (1998, dir. Gary Ross)
Self-gratification shakes things up in the sanitized fantasia of Gary Ross’ Pleasantville. Reese Witherspoon and Tobey Maguire play modern siblings who find themselves trapped inside a 1950s television sitcom. As the interlopers introduce sex to the show’s innocent inhabitants, Witherspoon’s character explains the mechanics of self-pleasure to Joan Allen’s curious housewife, Betty Parker. As Betty slips into a warm bath … vibrant color seeps into her literally black-and-white world. A tree outside bursts into flames, and suddenly the town of Pleasantville has become several shades more interesting—not to mention pleasant for its residents.
4. There’s Something About Mary (1998, dir. Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly)
It’s shortly before Ted’s big date with longtime crush Mary (Cameron Diaz), and he is needing to get over his nervousness. Played by Ben Stiller, Ted is counseled by his friend Dom (Chris Elliott). “Tell me you spank the monkey before any big date,” says Dom, perplexed that Ted doesn’t make that a common practice. “Are you crazy? That’s like going out there with a loaded gun!” Ted takes the advice. But then Mary arrives at his hotel door at a particularly climactic moment, and Ted can’t quite figure out where everything landed. Seconds later, he greets Mary at the door. She mistakes the stringy white stuff hanging off his chin to be hair gel.
(See more in The 10 best R-rated comedies and The 10 best bathroom scenes in film.)
3. American Pie (1999, dir. Paul Weitz)
When virginal Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) is told by a friend that reaching third base feels like a “warm apple pie,” and then Jim finds that very pie cooling off in the kitchen of his family home—well, what’s a guy supposed to do? In the aptly titled American Pie, Jim decides to find out for himself. The actor was jittery when it came time to film the scene. “I called my manager and I remember telling him like, ‘Dude, am I really about to go in there and do this with a pie? Is this porn? Am I tripping? Is this not as funny as I thought it was? Am I really going to do this?’ Biggs told People magazine in 2023. “And he literally told me, ‘Jason, you go in there and you hump that pie with all you got.” And that’s how Jason Biggs humped himself into one of cinema’s most outrageously iconic scenes.
2. Being There (1979, dir. Hal Ashby)
In this deadpan satire of media and politics, Eve (Shirley MacLaine) throws herself at Peter Sellers’ television-obsessed Chauncey Gardner. At first he responds with passionate kissing, mimicking what he is watching on the TV behind her. When the scene on TV ends, Chauncey goes cold. Startled, Eve asks what would make him happy. “I like to watch, Eve,” he says blankly. The misunderstanding prompts her to take matters into her own hands, literally, writhing on a bearskin rug while the oblivious Chauncey, glued to a yoga demonstration on the tube, does a headstand on his bed. Under the direction of Hal Ashby, the moment is absurd and faintly heartbreaking. On set, MacLaine said Laurence Olivier told her he had turned down the role in Being There of Eve’s elderly husband because “he didn’t like the idea of being in a movie with me masturbating.”
(See more in The 10 best political films.)
1. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, dir. Amy Heckerling)
“Doesn’t anybody fucking knock anymore?” says an exasperated Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold), the anxious-everyman teen, when his sister’s friend Linda (Phoebe Cates) walks in on him mid-self-gratification in the bathroom. Linda doesn’t know it, but the audience does—she’s been the subject of Brad’s impromptu fantasy. In a daydream sequence that tickled the hormones of a generation of moviegoers, Linda emerges from the Hamiltons’ swimming pool, removes her red bikini top and embraces Brad to the accompaniment of The Cars’ “Moving in Stereo.” The anecdote is likely apocryphal, but word in the 1980s held that Blockbuster video stores routinely had to replace VHS cassette tapes of Fast Times because customers repeatedly rewound the scene.
(See more in The 15 best school-centric films, The 10 best R-rated comedies, The 20 best hangout movies, and The 10 best bathroom scenes in film.)
Honorable mention: Happiness (1998, dir. Todd Solondz), The Piano Teacher (2001, dir. Michael Haneke), Road Trip (2000, dir. Todd Phillips), Saltburn (2023, dir. Emerald Fennell), Secretary (2002, dir. Steven Shainberg), Shame (2011, dir. Steve McQueen), The Squid and the Whale (2005, dir. Noah Baumbach)
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 