Intimacy

"A vital contribution to our understanding of intimacy both on screen and in life." Gillian Anderson | An Evening Standard 'Book to Watch' for 2025From the initial spark of attraction when your eyes first meet, to spontaneously dancing together in the kitchen and falling asleep side by side - how do we create those intimate moments of connection? As a pioneering Intimacy Coordinator, Ita O’Brien has choreographed some of the most groundbreaking, passionate and vulnerable intimate scenes onscreen. From Normal People to I May Destroy You, and in so many more productions, she has also made these scenes safer, more joyful and more empowering to perform in. No one knows intimacy, the power of true connection, better than her. So, what can her work teach us about our own relationships, both with ourselves and others? How can we use her tools to discover what it is that we truly want in our intimate lives? And how can all of this create environments in which intimacy can take seed, grow and even thrive? Combining embodied wisdom, behind-the-scenes stories and exercises for connection, Intimacy offers us a field guide to discovering our desires, communicating our needs, and cultivating truly intimate relationships at every stage of our lives.

Ita O'Brien is one of the world's leading Intimacy Coordinators, and the creator of the Intimacy On Set guidelines, which are now used around the world. She has worked on a huge number of productions (23 in 2021 alone!), including Normal People (BBC/Hulu), I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO), It's A Sin (Channel 4/HBO) and Sex Education (Netflix), and upcoming releases include Conversations With Friends (BBC/Hulu), Dangerous Liaisons (Playground/Starz), Lady Chatterley's Lover (Netflix/Blueprint Pictures; dir: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre) and Empire of Light (Neal Street Productions/Searchlight; dir: Sam Mendes). Ita has been interviewed or profiled by Vogue, Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, Guardian, The Times, Elle, Entertainment Weekly and many others, and appeared on numerous radio and television shows, and podcasts.