Eva Green (46) Looks Back on the Brutal Sex Scene in ‘300: Rise of an Empire’ That Left Her Covered in Bruises

Movie sex scenes come in many flavors, from tender to awkward to deliberately over the top. Every so often, one lands in the last category and becomes the thing audiences remember most about a film. For ‘300: Rise of an Empire,’ that scene is the one between Eva Green’s Artemisia and Sullivan Stapleton’s Themistokles.

The 2014 follow-up to Zack Snyder’s original film was directed by Noam Murro, with Snyder co-writing the script alongside Kurt Johnstad. It followed a Greek fleet led by Themistokles as it faced the Persian navy, and it leaned hard into the slow-motion violence the franchise is known for. Lena Headey returned as Queen Gorgo, and Rodrigo Santoro came back as Xerxes.

Now Green’s comments about shooting that infamous sequence have resurfaced online. Looking back on the scene, the actress said it was less a love scene than a fight, and that she ended up with bruises all over her body afterward. She also said she smacked her co-star during the shoot.

Green made the comments in a 2014 interview with ShortList magazine, around the film’s release. She admitted she had not even seen the finished scene at the time, only heard that it was full-on and brutal. In her telling, the sequence was built around two warriors trying to dominate each other rather than around romance.

She also gave a sense of how little Stapleton needed encouragement, describing him as a big, strong Australian who was proud of it. She added that it was even funnier because he had to have the hair on his chest waxed off for the scene. Green separately told Total Film that the production shot 2 versions of the scene, a “nice” one and the more aggressive one that made the final cut.

In another interview from the press tour, she called the scene a love-hate fight rather than anything resembling vanilla sex. Taken together, her comments paint the picture of an actress who understood exactly what the sequence was meant to be and committed to it fully.

In the film, Artemisia summons Themistokles to her ship under the pretense of negotiation. When he refuses to change sides, she turns to seduction, and the encounter becomes a rough, ferocious tangle in which each tries to gain the upper hand. Afterward, she draws her sword, and the power struggle continues.

Critics noted the scene’s camp energy at the time. NPR said the 2 characters rip each other’s clothes off the first time they are alone together and then can’t decide between making love or making war. Others were less charmed, and some reviewers found the sequence uncomfortable given Artemisia’s backstory.

Almost everyone agreed on one point, though: Green was the film’s biggest asset. Several critics called Artemisia the most memorable part of the movie, and a few argued that the actress deserved awards attention for her unabashedly over-the-top performance. A recent retrospective from Far Out Magazine went as far as to call the scene the most memorable moment in ‘Rise of an Empire’ by far, while also noting that Stapleton was a far less commanding presence than his co-star.

That reputation fits what Green has become known for. She first reached mainstream audiences as a Bond girl in ‘Casino Royale,’ then built a career on striking, intense characters, including a lead role in the Showtime series ‘Penny Dreadful.’ Artemisia is arguably the purest example of her ability to dominate a movie that otherwise struggles to hold its own.

The film itself drew mixed reviews, with Time Out giving it 3 out of 5 stars and others finding it less compelling than the original. Even so, it keeps getting rediscovered, largely because of Green’s performance and the scene she is still being asked about more than a decade later.

For a franchise built on stylized excess, the fact that the most talked-about scene is also the one that left its star bruised says a lot about how far the cast was willing to go.

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