‘ALL I could think of was that she was with Russell Crowe!”

That’s Mark Ruffalo’s recollection of how he felt while shooting sex scenes with Meg Ryan for “In the Cut.”

Ryan’s fling with Crowe – while she was still married to Dennis Quaid – created a scandal during the filming of “Proof of Life” in 1999.

That wasn’t the only thing giving Ruffalo a serious case of performance anxiety.

Director Jane Campion “wanted the character to be such a competent and confident lover that she kept shouting things like, ‘You’re not at school anymore. You know what you’re doing.’ It was very stressful.”