Jake Gyllenhaal is shedding light on the not-so-sexy aspect of filming love scenes. On Tuesday, Oct. 5, the Guilty actor opened up about his sex scenes with Jennifer Aniston in the 2002 romance movie The Good Girl.

During a virtual appearance on “The Howard Stern Show,” presenter Howard Stern asked Gyllenhaal what it was like to film a love scene with Aniston. Stern said sarcastically that it must have been “torture” for the performer.

“It was torture… but it was also not torture,” he said — and revealed a “technique” they employed to keep things copacetic.

“I do remember a pillow,” Gyllenhaal told Stern. “Yeah, the pillow technique was used. That was just preemptive and used generally always when actually in a horizontal place in that movie,” he said. “Everything else was whatever it was. I remember those two characters did a lot of making out on like, boxes in the back room.”

THE GOOD GIRL, from left: Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal, 2002. ©Fox Searchlight / Courtesy Everett Collection

“The pillow saved you,” Howard joked. “Who taught you that?”

“I think that was actually Jennifer’s suggestion. I think she was actually very kind to suggest it before we began. She was like, ‘I’m putting a pillow here.’ That was all she said, I think I remember that.”

Before the pillow discussion, Stern asked Gyllenhaal whether he had a crush on Aniston back in the day, and if he warned the Friends star ahead of time, saying something like, “‘If you’re feeling something, protrusion or whatever, I can’t control this.”

Moving on, Gyllenhaal stated, “Weirdly, love scenes are awkward because there are maybe 30, 50 people watching it.”

“Maybe if you have a closed set, it’s less. That doesn’t turn me on. Most of the time, it’s oddly mechanical, right?

“Also, it’s a dance. You’re choreographing for a camera […] It’s one of those things – it’s like a fight scene, you’ve got to choreograph those things, and I always have tried.”

Gyllenhaal was 22 years old when “The Good Girl” aired in 2002.  Aniston was 33 years old, with nearly eight years of “Friends” under her belt, as well as the successful film “Office Space” and several minor appearances. “The Good Girl” is about a small-town shop worker (Aniston) who is unhappy in her marriage and has an affair with a teenage stock boy (Gyllenhaal) at her workplace.