Gwyneth Paltrow reveals why she firmly refused explicit sex scene in acclaimed '90s film

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Gwyneth Paltrow has always known when to put her foot down.

The actress had a conversation with former co-star Ethan Hawke for Vanity Fair, and they spoke in detail about their experience filming 1998's "Great Expectations," including the explicit sex scene she flat-out refused to do.

"Do you remember Alfonso pitching you the love scene?" Hawke asked, referring to the film's director, Alfonso Cuarón.

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Gwyneth Paltrow refused a sex scene because she worried what her father and grandfather would think. (John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images)

Paltrow replied, "Oh my god," explaining that Cuarón had wanted to film a scene in which her character received oral sex from Hawke's character.

"I was like, ‘Oh my god, my father’s going to have a heart attack," she remembered.

Hawke impersonated Cuarón, saying, "The camera is going to go down your belly, and then it's going to go up your breasts, and then it's going to go in your face as you reach ecstasy. And then when you reach ecstasy, the light will explode like to the sun!"

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Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998's "Great Expectations." (Lawrence Schwartzwald/Sygma via Getty Images)

Paltrow laughed at the impersonation, and Hawke added, "And I remember looking at Gwyneth, and Gwyneth is like, ‘Alfonso, I’m never going to do that.'"

"But you know, I had, in my early career, I was really self-conscious about my dad and grandfather seeing this kind of stuff," she said. "Like, it really bothered me.

"Now, I wouldn't care."

Hawke praised the way she handled the refusal back then, remembering she was firm but not "petulant," and Paltrow said, "Maybe I was too prudish in the moment.

Alfonso Cuarón directed Paltrow and Hawke in the movie. (Ronald Siemoneit/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

"I was definitely worried about it."

In "Great Expectations," a modernization of the Charles Dickens classic, Hawke starred as Finn, a painter who was fixated on Paltrow's Estella. During their conversation, she revealed she nearly missed out on the role because of a fear that she didn't have the right look for the character.

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She said she met with Cuarón and was "very excited" at the prospect of doing the movie, but "then there was a little blip where someone at the studio thought I wasn't pretty enough to do it, remember?"

Paltrow also claimed she nearly lost the role in the movie because someone from the studio thought she wasn't "pretty enough" to play the character. (Steven Ferdman)

Hawke, shaking his head, answered, "That's the kind of s--- that happens all the time."

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"I think [Cuarón] was convinced otherwise, and then I finally got the part," she recalled.