AceShowbiz - Former Bond girl Gemma Arterton is glad her intense sex scenes in new movie "The Escape" were with pal "Dominic Cooper", because it was like acting with her brother.

The "Quantum of Solace" actress plays a depressed mum in the film and Cooper's character basically rapes her, but, thanks to the two stars' friendship, they were able to laugh about the tough scenes as soon as director Dominic Savage called "Cut".

"Dominic and I are very close. It's like he's my brother," Gemma tells Radio Times magazine. "I felt very safe with him. I didn't feel at all exploited, even though it's awful to go through and I find it really hard to watch those parts.

"Luckily, because Dominic and I are friends, after doing these prolonged scenes where he is basically raping me, we could switch off afterwards and try to have a laugh. That's the way we dealt with that intensity. I'm like that anyway. I don't like to dwell."

And she insists the sex scenes were very professionally handled: "The thing I hate about sex scenes is when they're pornographic - wide shots with bright lights and naked bodies," Gemma adds, "but this was all about the faces and it didn't really matter what we were doing."

Arterton, who shot the film in her native Gravesend, Kent in England, insists the sex scenes weren't the most awkward thing about the shoot - she also had to be mean to the two young stars playing her character's kids in the film.

"That was really, really challenging because usually I'm quite playful around kids," she explains, "but here I couldn't do that because it wasn't my role. By the end of the shoot they really hated me; when I came up to them they would run away. It was really traumatic for me because I love kids."