“They’re Real, and They’re Spectacular!”

Was Thora Birch’s nudity in American Beauty faked?

Many people have asked me if the topless scene through the window was in fact some CGI facsimile like the Helena Bonham-Carter sex scene in Fight Club, since Thora was underage at the time the movie was shot. Some have pointed out that the window frame conveniently separates Thora’s head from the rest of her body, which would have made digitally grafting her head onto someone else’s body very easy.

However, according to the DVD commentary (which was actually pretty interesting, for those of you who are into that sort of thing), that really was Thora standing topless in the window, not a body double or computerized approximation. The reason they could film her in the buff, I heard elsewhere, is that she had permission from her parents on the one hand — her father is also her manager, after all — and that the context wasn’t in any way sexual on the other. (For more details on the subject of underage screen nudity, see my Christi Harris update.) So for those of you debating whether or not to choke your bishop over the American Beauty vidcaps and clips here, choke away.