EVA MENDES has quite the introduction in the kinetic action-thriller "We Own the Night" as party girl Amada Juarez. Dressed in provocative lingerie, Amada and boyfriend Bobby (Joaquin Phoenix) get hot and heavy to the pulsating beat of Blondie's "Heart of Glass."
Though not in the "Lust, Caution" category, the erotic sequence in the film, which opens Friday, does involve some nudity on the 33-year-old actress' part and some very R-rated heavy petting.
"I was really nervous about starting with a strong sex scene," says Mendes, who was born in Miami of Cuban parents and raised in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles. "But she's a lot more than that, and people will see that."
Written and directed by James Gray ("The Yards"), "We Own the Night," set in New York in the late 1980s, revolves around Bobby, the black sheep of his family. Instead of becoming a decorated cop like his brother Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) and father, Burt (Robert Duvall), Bobby is the manager of a successful disco. He and Amada are the darlings of the scene -- they drink, smoke marijuana and snort cocaine with abandon. But when Joseph and his crime unit take on the Russian drug dealer working out of the club, Bobby and Amada are caught in the middle.
Mendes, who has appeared in such films as "Hitch" opposite Will Smith, "Training Day" and "Out of Time" with Denzel Washington, and "Ghost Rider" with Nicolas Cage, admits she doesn't shy away from nudity in movies.
"I think I have a much more European approach to nudity," says the actress, who admires such European directors as Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini. "If it's relevant and not exploiting me, I'm OK with it," she says over the phone from her car. "You know, I sometimes prefer to be nude. It makes more sense than having racy lingerie. I found it more beautiful to be nude and natural and less cheesy and less vulgar, actually."
But doing an explicit love scene was nerve-racking for the leggy actress. "This was actually my first love scene," she says. "I've avoided it quite nicely. You do the best you can do. James Gray made me feel really protected, so it was me, Joaquin, the director and the cameraman and the director of photography."
She found doing an explosive fight sequence with Phoenix much more emotionally and physically racking. "I almost prefer doing a love scene, as long as it's coming from love, than doing a scene where we are hitting each other and screaming obscenities at each other and really going to that place," says Mendes.
