Him: "AchOO!" Her: "You disgust me!"

“He had a very runny nose. It wasn’t appealing. It wasn’t pleasant.”

Actress Reese Witherspoon, describing to MTV in decidedly negative terms her sex scenes with “Twilight” hearthrob  Robert Pattinson in the soon-to-be-released film “Watter for Elephants.”

I’ve always liked Witherspoon, but it just doesn’t get much meaner and unprofessional than this.  Love scenes and sex scenes are potentially embarrassing for any actor or actress, and film and stage professionals recognize this and scrupulously apply the Golden Rule. If “kissing and telling” is bad, “fake sex and telling” is worse, not merely a breach of trust and confidence, not simply unfair and disrespectful, but a stunning  violation of professional standards. It is also irresponsible for an actress to attempt to shatter a film’s premise before it even opens.

I don’t know what Pattinson did or said during the shoot that provoked the actress to go out of her way to publicly embarrass him, but good luck to Witherspoon the next time she has to play a love scene with an actor. The ironic part is that Pattinson was being thoroughly professional by gamely sticking to the shooting schedule that required him to portray passion when he was suffering from a bad cold….and this is the thanks he gets.Wow.

Reese Witherspoon’s stock in trade has been playing spunky, nice girls. It seems she’s a better actress than we ever realized.