Natalia Dyer thinks teenage sexuality is "embarrassing".
The 25-year-old actress explores the issue of sexuality in her movie ‘Yes, God, Yes’, in which she plays a 16-year-old girl called Alice, and Natalia has admitted it can be an "awkward" subject to deal with.
She said: "Teenage sexuality is funny and beautiful and awkward and embarrassing.
"I grew up watching interpretations of females, but it was never like, ‘That’s me,’ it was always like, ‘Oh, that’s how I’m supposed to look, talk and feel in order to get the guy, or whatever.’
"So it’s really important to have films like ‘Yes, God Yes’, especially when it comes to displaying women and sex, what they want and how they behave."
In the movie, Natalia’s character is told that sex before marriage is "against God’s will".
Asked what she thinks about the Church’s attitude towards sex, the actress told The Independent: "I think it’s such a strange concept to take something that feels so instinctual and turn it into something bad.
"It feels backwards. We’re all human, we’re not perfect. Let’s not pretend, and not hold people to standards that we don’t hold for ourselves. Why judge people for things that are natural?"
Natalia also believes there’s a distinctly different attitude towards "male pleasure".
The actress insisted there’s a "deep history" to the gender imbalance in relation to sexuality.
Natalia – who spent the coronavirus lockdown with her actor boyfriend Charlie Heaton – explained: "The conversation of male pleasure was a lot more present than female pleasure in my upbringing.
"There’s such a deep history to this, and it’s because male pleasure is very obvious."