Chris Pine thought it was "really important" to strip naked in his new movie.
The 38-year-old actor portrays legendary Scottish ruler Robert the Bruce in ‘Outlaw King’ and can’t understand why his nudity has caused such a stir when the violence depicted in the film has barely been commented on.
He said: "In exploring this kind of man who is to be called king and treated like a king, I thought it was important to see the king and the animal, the man and the animal – that his feet are in the mud.
"That he is both violent and primitive and bestial, but also something else.
"So I thought to see the human de-clothed and as his animal self is really important…
"People want to talk about my penis as if we’re a bunch of teenagers playing spin the bottle…
"Certainly, there’s a lot of violence in this film and people get debowelled and stuff like that, and no one wants to talk about that.
"And I think it’s certainly a marker of our puritanical culture where, if people make love or show what God gave us, it’s somehow NC-17 [adult-rated] and you can debowel, behead… you can do all sorts of crazy s**t like that and people are like, ‘yeah that seems right’. Let’s put a big mirror up to us and say, ‘Why? What’s going on, guys?’ "
And Chris also questioned the double standards of why his co-star Florence Pugh’s nude scenes haven’t caused as much of a stir.
He told the Daily Mirror newspaper: "Florence shows her entire body in this film and no one is talking about that…
"Is Florence expected to do that because she is a woman and I’m not expected to do that because I’m a man?"
Chris Pine: Nude scene was important
