These Actors Didn't Want To Touch Each Other
Hollywood history is bursting with tales of behind-the-scenes turmoil that results when co-stars on a film or TV project refuse to work together. One of the most extreme cases took place during filming of the aptly titled rom-com I Love Trouble, with the Los Angeles Times reporting that co-stars Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts came to loathe each other so much that stand-ins were brought in so the actors could spend as little time away from each other as humanly possible. Things got so bad on that set, Roberts called Nolte "completely disgusting." He returned fire rather mildly, saying, "She's not a nice person. Everyone knows that."
But personality clashes between co-stars are just one example of the many, many times when actors didn't want to get anywhere near each other. With excuses running the gamut from religious opposition to good old fashioned physical revulsion, these are the stars who had to grin and bear it when it came time to get down to the nitty gritty.
Alyson Hannigan hated kissing co-star Jason Segel
Alyson Hannigan and Jason Segel famously played spouses Lily Aldrin and Marshall Eriksen on the hit CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother. While the fictional couple's relationship proved to be the longest-lasting and most stable among the show's diverse cast of characters, Hannigan revealed that she dreaded getting close to her co-star — because of his smoking. "It's like kissing an ashtray and he's trying to be polite by having gum or mints, but it doesn't help," Hannigan told Digital Spy.
According to Hannigan, both she and Segel recognized his cigarette habit would be a problem from the get go, and he was initially eager to butt out. "When we started the pilot [for the show] he was like, 'Get me to stop smoking, I'll be your best friend.' So we did this bet where he would owe me $10 every time he had a cigarette. After the first day, he owed me $200," Hannigan revealed.
As a result, Segel put his foot down and "quit cold turkey for about a year," she explained. "It was fantastic but then... he got stressed out and he started smoking again."
Denzel Washington nixed necking with Julia Roberts
When Julia Roberts signed on to star in the big-screen adaptation of John Grisham's The Pelican Brief, she suggested that Denzel Washington be hired as her co-star. One thing that moviegoers found odd about the onscreen pairing, however, was that Washington and Roberts never share a single kiss in the film, despite the characters becoming romantic in the book. "I have taken so much s**t over the years about not kissing Denzel in that film," Roberts told Newsweek in a profile of Washington. "Don't I have a pulse? Of course I wanted to kiss Denzel. It was his idea to take the damn scenes out."
As Washington explained to Newsweek, a big reason he opted to remove those scenes from the film had to do with his concerns about how an interracial love scene with Roberts would play with Black female moviegoers. As Newsweek noted, Washington had experienced backlash when he kissed white actress Mimi Rogers in an earlier film, The Mighty Quinn. After Black women vociferously booed the scene during a "test screening," he made the decision to eschew any love scenes in his films unless it was with a Black actress. "Black women are not often seen as objects of desire on film," said Washington. "They have always been my core audience."
Love scenes became awkward for these Gossip Girl exes
During the course of Gossip Girl's six seasons, co-stars Penn Badgley and Blake Lively became romantically involved — and, eventually, romantically uninvolved. While sparks flew in their love scenes when the two were a couple, the romance between the fictional characters they played led to no small degree of awkwardness after they split up.
As a result, as Badgley had a few pretty easy answers when a caller on Watch What Happens Live asked about his best and worst onscreen kisses. "I'll say best was Blake, because we actually had a relationship at the time," he explained. "And worst? Maybe Blake after we broke up."
While it was certainly not an ideal scenario for either actor, he insisted they were able to surmount any personal problems that they may have been experiencing. In fact, Badgley contended that both he and Lively were "consummately professional." He added, "I think we should both pat ourselves on the back for getting through it. You know, anything is complicated in that way, and we handled it."
Neal McDonough lost a gig for refusing steamy scenes with Virginia Madsen
Eyebrows were raised when Deadline reported that actor Neal McDonough — known for roles in such projects as Band of Brothers and Boomtown — was replaced by David James Elliott in ABC drama series Scoundrels, "3 days into the filming." While such abrupt casting shuffles aren't unheard of in Hollywood, the circumstances behind McDonough's exit were unusual, to say the least.
According to Deadline, McDonough is a devout Catholic who has made it clear that he doesn't participate in onscreen love scenes. When he refused to partner with co-star Virigina Madsen in "some heated love scenes," he wound up parting ways with the show. "It has cost him jobs, but the man is sticking to his principles," a source told the outlet.
In an interview with the Christian Examiner, McDonough explained the rationale that allows him to simulate the act of murder onscreen while refusing to pretend to get romantic. "Killing people onscreen — that's fake. That's not real," McDonough explained. "When you're in bed with another woman onscreen — guess what? That's real. I don't like that kind of stuff. Especially now with kids, I don't want to have my kids say, 'Hey, Dad, what are you doing with that lady onscreen?'"
Kirk Cameron refuses to kiss anyone but his wife
Neal McDonough isn't the only actor to eschew onscreen love scenes due to religious conviction. Kirk Cameron, best known as the oldest sibling in 1990s family sitcom Growing Pains, has been unabashedly outspoken about his beliefs as an evangelical Christian, particularly as it relates to his profession. "You have to be true to your higher values. As an actor, you're playing someone other than who you are, but as a human being, you need to be who you are," he told The Hollywood Reporter.
It's for that reason, he explained in an interview with Today, that he flatly refuses to kiss anyone other than his wife, even onscreen. So persistent is Cameron in this beliefs, his wife, actress Chelsea Noble (pictured above), was brought in as a body double for a kissing scene in his film Fireproof, filling in for co-star Erin Bethea. "I have a commitment not to kiss any other woman," he told Today's Hoda Kotb. "So when I'm kissing my wife, we're actually husband and wife honoring marriage behind the scenes," he added.
As Cameron explained, he and his wife view the sanctity of marriage with the utmost seriousness. "We've been married for 17 years... and we have six children," he added. "So marriage is a very special and sacred thing to us."
Lindsay Lohan put the kibosh on smooching Sheen
According to a report from TMZ, Lindsay Lohan created a production delay during filming of 2013's Scary Movie 5 when she refused to kiss co-star Charlie Sheen. "[Lohan] ultimately refused to do it because of Charlie's wild partying past," sources told the tab.
While TMZ noted that the source of Lohan's paranoia was "unclear," Sheen's penchant for adult film stars and prostitutes — borne out in his revelation just a few years later that he had contracted HIV — no doubt had something to do with it. In fact, TMZ also reported a source claimed that both Lohan and Sheen were asked to sign releases confirming their mouths were free of cold sores; a body double was eventually used for the scenes in which kissing was involved.
Meanwhile, sources told TMZ that Sheen "was cool as a cucumber about the whole thing." He apparently didn't hold any grudges, either, given that TMZ also reported that Sheen later gave Lohan $100,000 to pay off back taxes she owed the IRS.
Kristen Stewart found it 'hard to kiss Taylor Lautner
Twilight superfans will certainly recall whether they belonged to "Team Jacob" or "Team Edward" when it came to whether Kristen Stewart's character, Bella Swan, should wind up with vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) or werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner).
For Stewart, filming love scenes with Pattinson was a no-brainer, given that the actors had fallen in love while filming the first Twilight movie and remained a couple throughout the series. When it came to making out with Lautner, however, Stewart has confessed it felt "so against everything that Bella's always been," she told Us Weekly while promoting Twilight: Eclipse.
Admitting her love scenes with Lautner were "hard" to film, she admitted they had "so much fun with this stuff because our intimate moments are so few and far between — and weird." Okay, so maybe wasn't necessarily against getting theatrically physical with Lautner, but it was definitely awkward. She characterized the experience as being markedly different from her steamy scenes with Pattinson. "Me and Rob are always so serious because we have [a lot of] those scenes," she explained.
The stinky way Kate Hudson repelled Dane Cook
When it comes to cataloguing life's most horrible experiences, it would be easy to assume that "kissing Kate Hudson" would not be among them. Yet when comedian Dane Cook co-starred with Hudson in My Best Friend's Girl, he recalled it was not a particularly pleasurable experience when the script called for him to lock lips with the blonde bombshell.
During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Cook was asked to single out his worst onscreen kiss. According to Entertainment Tonight, he gave up Hudson's name without hesitation. "I did a movie with her, My Best Friend's Girl, and I think she purposely ate like a feast of onions before our scene," he revealed.
Meanwhile, Cook appeared alongside Hudson and their co-star Jason Biggs to promote My Best Friend's Girl by answering fan questions in a video produced by MovieFone. Cook's answer to one question could shine some light on why Hudson felt it necessary to deliberately repel him. "What do you look for in a girl," the question asked. "Me!" Cook quipped, political correctness be damned.
Jennifer Lawrence had to get drunk for a sex scene with Chris Pratt
During a roundtable discussion with several other actresses for The Hollywood Reporter, Jennifer Lawrence announced it was just a few weeks earlier that she filmed her "first real sex scene" in the film Passengers, in which she co-starred with Chris Pratt. Filming the scene, she admitted, "was really bizarre. It was really weird." Lawrence's fellow Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, also on hand for the roundtable, joked, "When you say 'real' sex scene, do you mean penetration or...?"
Lawrence responded by saying, "No, no. Thank you for clarifying. It was weird. And everything was done right; nobody did anything wrong. It's just a bizarre experience."
Asked what she does as an actress to prepare for a steamy scene, Lawrence replied, "You drink. I got really, really drunk." However, she admitted that only caused her to feel guilty when she realized it was the first time she had kissed a married man. "And I knew it was my job, but I couldn't tell my stomach that... You want to do it real, you want everything to be real, but then... That was the most vulnerable I've ever been."
Kissing creeped out these Harry Potter co-stars
Sometimes co-stars don't want to get near each other because they don't know each other well or, in some cases, can't stand each other's guts. In the case of Harry Potter co-stars Rupert Grint (who played Ron Weasley) and Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), however, it was the fact that they knew each other so well that when their characters ultimately shared a kiss, it felt wrong for both of them.
"I never look back at that scene," Grint told People. "I've known Emma since she was literally 9 years old and we had this very brother-sister relationship. And it just felt very surreal. I have a memory of her face getting closer and closer. Like, 'Oh my God.' I can't really remember anything apart from that."
Kissing Watson was so cringe-inducing for Grint, they didn't rehearse it, and would only perform the scene for the camera a single time. "One take was enough," Grint said, adding, "It was such a huge moment and there was so much expectation. Quite a lot of pressure actually."
Miles Teller: Shailene Woodley 'smelled like crap'
When Miles Teller co-starred with Shailene Woodley in the film The Spectacular Now, he admitted to being disgusted whenever a scene called for the two of them to kiss.
Interviewed by Variety at the film's premiere, Teller clarified that it was nothing personal — but had to do with her unconventional health-and-wellness regime. "Before our first kissing scene, Shailene took these Chinese dirt supplements and shoved them in her mouth," Teller explained. "It's like a dirt pouch, and it smells like crap." In fact, added Teller, "She always has a mason jar and 100 percent of the time it smells like crap."
Woodley set the record straight, somewhat at least, during an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman (via Today). She clarified that it's not dirt that she eats, but clay. "Clay is one of my favorites because if you look at indigenous cultures around the world, people are eating clay almost daily. It's just a part of their diet," she told Letterman, who asked her to differentiate between clay and dirt. "That's a great question," Woodley replied. "Um, I think dirt is... they're made from different matter. It's a different earth material. I'm not smart enough to answer that question."
Robert Pattinson refused to get sexy with his canine co-star
Robert Pattinson had no problem getting steamy with co-star/girlfriend Kristen Stewart in all those Twilight movies, yet he was asked to cross a big line for his role in the film Good Time. During a visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Pattinson was asked to discuss what took place on set during a scene featuring his dog-loving character engaged in bestiality with a canine co-star.
Pattinson told host Jimmy Kimmel that the director told him to "do it for real, man!" while the dog's trainer likewise encouraged him to go for it, but also suggested he could "just massage the inside of his thighs." Ultimately, Pattinson didn't go through with it, but instead got busy with "a fake red rocket."
The actor's remarks apparently caused enough controversy that he had to issue a clarifying statement, obtained by Entertainment Weekly. Pattinson insisted his Kimmel anecdote "was supposed to be a joke," adding, "No one at all expected or assumed that anything like that would happen on the Good Time set." He concluded by admitting he felt "embarrassed that in the moment, I was trying to make Jimmy laugh, only to create confusion and a false impression."