When we sit down to watch a movie, we get pretty invested in the main characters, especially if there’s a major love story.
Although there are countless movies that feature very romantic love scenes, there are just as many stars who aren’t that comfortable with them. They each have their various reasons.
While many of us would love the opportunity to make out with the most popular Hollywood actors (Colin Firth, Orlando Bloom, or Leonardo DiCaprio are all worthy examples, in our opinion), there are stars who have felt the exact opposite. Whether it’s bad breath, fear of catching something incurable, steadfast dedication to their religion, or anything else in between, many actors have straight-up refused to lock lips with their co-stars — even if it meant that their jobs were on the line, as was probably the case for many.
Though we’ll never actually know the extent of the fervently intimate scenes we may have missed out on as a result of their decisions, at the end of the day it was their choice, and we really can’t be too mad at that.
So which actors refused to make out with their co-stars?
Neal McDonough
Neal McDonough is a devout Catholic and will not do love scenes. He views them as “dishonoring god” and tantamount to infidelity to his wife. He has also said he doesn’t want his kids seeing him onscreen being romantic with a woman other than their mother.
McDonough was actually fired from the show “Scoundrels” for refusing to film romantic scenes.
Actor Patrick McGoohan
Like Neal McDonough, who has been mentioned several times, McGoohan was a devout Catholic and long-time married father of three daughters. You will notice in his action shows that he almost never uses a gun, and certainly never fires it in anger, nor does he seduce any of the female characters. He was quite specific about this, once referring to this in an interview as feeling as if he was a guest in people’s homes when acting on television, and he never wanted to do a scene that would cause his daughters to be embarrassed or wonder why their father was kissing another woman who wasn’t their mother.
His decision to stand by his principles cost him earnings potentially in the millions of dollars, but he apparently never regretted it.
In an interview he gave back in the 1960s, he said: “I thought there was too much emphasis on sex and violence,” McGoohan explained a few years after turning down the role. “It has an insidious and powerful influence on children. Would you like your son to grow up like James Bond? Since I hold these views strongly as an individual and parent I didn’t see how I could contribute to the very things to which I objected.”
Will Smith
[ads id=”ads2″]
Before he hit it big in blockbusters Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997), Will Smith was doing smaller movies like Six Degrees of Separation (1993) where he played the real-life con artist David Hampton who fooled everyone into thinking he was Sidney Poitier’s son. One of the scenes in the movie involved him kissing another man as the real-life David Hampton is a gay man but Will Smith refused to do the scene and the irate director had to shoot the fake kiss scene from behind.
