Steven Soderbergh's latest offering is a stark, convincingly acted and fearless existential investigation into the commerce of sex and the language of emotional manipulation.

Starring the 21-year-old porn star Sasha Grey in her first serious film role it focuses upon the various relationships of a call girl who offers her clients The Girlfriend Experience – supposedly something that offers everything a real relationship could satisfy, for a considerable fee.

With the clientele ranging from CEOs and orthodox Jewish jewellers to what one suspects are politicians, the film provides a unique lens through which to explore the politics of intimacy and the myriad weaknesses of the 21st-century male.

Considering her controversial and transgressive career in pornographic films, Grey's considered, mature and engaging performance is nothing short of a revelation. On a rainy evening in London we caught up with Sasha to talk about the politics of intimacy...

Dazed Digital: Your character in The Girlfriend Experience appears to be very in control and focused, and yet at one point we see this deep-seated vulnerability. Does she have fairytale beliefs about love that underpin everything?

Sasha Grey: In the context of the scene where she's crying, it was more to do with her dependency on her books. She has this really weak relationship with her boyfriend Chris.

And she has these ‘personology’ books that happen to match up her birth date with this random guy that’s interested in seeing her.

That sparks something new and she projects this ideal onto him – because the book says it’s true, she thinks it must be fate.

DD: Did you have a kind of back-story for her when you formed her character? Did you draw on your own experience?

SG: I didn’t draw so much on my own experience. I was fortunate enough to meet with two escorts, one in LA and one in New York, but even before that, I kept a very detailed character journal and I shared that with Stephen.

The casting director sent us anonymously written escort blogs that really helped me exaggerate the character and who she was.

DD: What was it like meeting with escorts? Do you think without prostitution and pornography there would be more instances of rape and so on? Or do you think that they actually allow for an arena where those kinds of abuses can take place?

SG: I think it depends. You have women on the street who are obviously being abused and they have pimps, I mean all you have to do is watch a few documentaries to see what that’s like and how raw it is.

That just perpetuates the negative stereotypes of prostitution, or pimping, or the johns. And then you have the women like Christine – they are like call girls, and they might not have a pimp; they are doing it on their own.

I don’t think that those necessarily perpetuate the abuse and the violence, but in the same vein, I don’t think they help stop it at all.

But the guys who are paying for the higher echelons don’t beat the girls up – well, that’s generally speaking from the research we did, maybe some politicians are going to go out there and beat some girls up, I don’t know.

DD: The film riffs on that notion that sex is commerce, I guess with your background that’s quite interesting? Do you think emotion ever be detached from the sexual act?

SG: (Laughs) I definitely think that emotions can be detached from sex and men are a great example of that! I don’t mean that in a bad way, I just mean, why do men pay for escorts? Because they don’t want that emotional connection, they don’t want that extra baggage.

DD: Do you think in our generation there is a crisis of intimacy? Does the film reflect a social breakdown in relationships between men and women?

SG: I don’t think it’s a breakdown, I think it’s actually a good thing, because maybe people are learning how to grow and be individ

uals – for a long time it was come home from work, pregnant, babies, marriage. In that instance, you end up hating the person you are married to because you share no similarities, you have no emotional connection, and you never did.

That’s because for one person it was based on family and another it was based on circumstance. But how does the film reflect on relationships between men and women today?

Well, Chelsea and Chris are a vain couple, and are always looking for a bigger mirror. They don’t really love each other, they are just there to make each other look good.

Does that reflect our society? Maybe on some levels, but not on a huge scale – it probably does more so with people who are in the public eye.

DD: Do you think it’s quite a bleak film in that way?

SG: No. This is a film about one person, her experiences and the people she encounters. That's not necessarily a reflection on society, but the money and the politics involved are a huge reflection on society.

DD: There is an intense loneliness about the whole film. Do you think the more people you know the lonelier you can be?

SG: Definitely. I’ve met people like that, they have met hundreds of thousands of people and are adored but they are still very lonely because they have never really grown-up, and they haven’t learned how to deal with autonomy, or how to be autonomous.

DD: But is that kind of singularity necessarily a positive thing?

SG: I think it’s good to know how to be that way. I don’t think it’s something you consistently have to be. That’s like never letting a child out of the house.

DD: Freud said libido had to be contained within societal constraints, otherwise there would be anarchy, but you’re saying that sexual freedom is the key for a more enlightened sense of being?

SG: Well, I just think it’s 2009 and we’re still so afraid to talk about sex. I think ignorance breeds fear and vice versa and the less you know the more negative things can happen, such as teenage pregnancy or the skyrocketing rate of STDs in young adults.

It is about sexual freedom but it's about more than that, it’s about communication and talking and learning. I think people are so afraid to do that; people are afraid of the truth – we’d rather hide inside a bubble.

DD: And there is the commerce of emotion in the film as well, because these guys buy into the idea that they are ‘with her’...

SG: Yeah. A lot of the johns in the film are actually based on men that these escorts actually talk about; they’re based on real guys. So, yeah, you’re dealing with really high-powered men who deal with hedge funds.

They’re CEOs of huge companies, and at the end of the day they’d actually rather pay for something and get instant gratification than seek out a long-term relationship that can provide that for them and more.

DD: What’s the acting experience like between this kind of film and pornography? I mean, this frame is more art house, and is more acceptable, but they are both performances…

SG: I think the technical aspects and the people and the crews are all very similar but as far as performances go, I really hate it when people say, ‘Oh this is reality porn!”

No. Because any time you put a camera in front of anybody, even if they have never been in front of a camera, they are going to act differently.

For me, pornography is performing – it is what it is and I am an extension of myself, I am hyper me, whereas in a film like this, I am doing character research and I am stepping into the shoes of someone else, and I am thinking about my mannerisms.

DD: Do you think that your background in the porn industry gave you authenticity?

SG: Not so much. Because her job is less about the sex, and more about being there to listen to all their problems.

DD: Kind of like a sounding board…

SG: Right. One thing that Stephen said though was that my level of sexual confidence is stronger than most young women’s, so I don’t have to think about it. It is second nature to me, it is who I am as a human being.

I don’t have to consciously be thinking about it as much as I did with other things that I developed into the character.

When I was on-set developing her characteristics and her personality traits, I had to continuously think about those things. In any role an actor takes there is going to be a piece of them and the piece of me is my demeanour, no... not necessarily my demeanour – my confidence.

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