The kiss is an intim-te gesture and, precisely for this reason, it is often the culmination of a scene or an entire film. However, many actors don't want to exchange it with their colleagues: some do it out of religious convictions, some out of opportunity, some out of resentment. And there are those who say no even because of a cold
The most intense moments that can be recreated on the big screen. In fact, it is no coincidence that Don Adelfio forces the projectionist Alfredo to cut all the kissing scenes from the films before allowing the inhabitants of Giancaldo to see the films at the Cinema Paradiso. Kissing never, as Giuseppe Tornatore recounts in his wonderful Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, is actually a practice that many Hollywood actors and actresses use regularly.
There are those who refuse to kiss fellow actors and actresses for religious reasons. The most famous case is that of Kirk Cameron. The actor, one of the first teenage idols in the 80s and 90s thanks to the TV series Parents in Blue Jeans, has always said that the only woman he will ever kiss in life is his wife Chelsea Noble (known right on that set) and therefore, out of respect for her, he only accepts films in which he doesn't have to kiss a different woman. Or, “My wife Chelsea comes on set and wears the actress's clothes. Then we shoot the scene showing just silhouettes so when I give a scripted kiss I'm actually kissing my wife, honoring my marriage. It's a personal commitment that I made to my wife,” he explained for the release of Fireproof in 2008. In reality, his career, which was very promising, never really took off. Today he has become a Baptist minister and acts in films with evangelical purposes. Neal McDonough also has a very strong faith and therefore «killing someone on screen is fiction, but when you're in bed with a woman on screen that's real. And I don't like these things. Especially now that I have kids. I don't want them to say, 'Hey dad, what are you doing with that woman over there on the television?' The result? Cast as the lead in the series Scoundrels, when he refused to kiss Virginia Madsen, his on-screen wife, he was fired and replaced by another actor.
There are also those who refused to kiss a beautiful actor to avoid making her boyfriend jealous. For her video I will be Leona Lewis said no to the kiss written in the script with Gossip Girl star Chace Crawford. "I said: it's just not talked about!" Said the pop star, then engaged to Lou Al-Chamaa. "I think he would have been jealous if I had and it never happened that way." The couple then separated in 2010. It is a rumor, but it seems that for the same reason Brad Pitt did not want to kiss Cate Blanchett in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. At the time it was said that, having some problems at home with Angelina Jolie, the actor did not want to add fuel to the fire. It seems that director David Fincher took a long time to convince him to shoot those scenes with the Australian actress.
It also went badly between Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen. The actress, worried about the lifestyle that she (she!) had defined as "too wild" of the protagonist of Two and a Half Men, had told the producers of the series, even before shooting the scenes, that she would never kiss the colleague. They, perhaps convinced that they could change her mind, did not change the script and were thus forced to hire another actress to replace the star in the intimacy scenes. It seems that Charlie Sheen's response to the matter was total indifference. The one who was really sick was Robert Pattinson and for this reason Reese Witherspoon did not want to shoot the scene where they had to kiss in Water for elephants. “Rob had the worst possible case of a cold I've ever seen. Literally all he did was sneeze and blow his nose – not a pleasant situation. I'm talking about green, infected and disgusting things…», said the Oscar winner for Walk the line. Pattinson also commented on the episode, apologizing to his colleague that he had to endure all of this.
Nicely perfidious was Jennifer Lawrence with Liam Hemsworth. Miley Cyrus' new husband told how much he hated having to kiss her colleague on the set of The Hunger Games. “She's one of my best friends, I love her very much, but if we had a scene where you had to kiss she'd purposely eat garlic or canned tuna or something equally disgusting. She did it herself before filming and she said to me: "I ate garlic, I ate tuna and I didn't brush my teeth". And I thought: "How nice, I can't wait to taste them too"».
Six Degrees of Separation was Will Smith's first starring drama film, then in the midst of the global success of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It was 1993 and the young rapper actor played a gay con artist who wanted to pass himself off as Sidney Poitier's son. The script included a scene in which the actor had to passionately kiss another man, but Smith refused to shoot it. After the remonstrances of the director, Fred Schepisi, Will turned to Denzel Washington who advised him to stand firm on the decision. Finally, the scene was shot from afar with a fake kiss. Years later Smith said he regretted that choice: "I was very immature at the time and I wasn't emotionally stable to accept the artistic commitment that aspect of the film required".
But the most common reason among those who don't want to kiss a colleague is another: the two can't stand each other. Julia Roberts defined her co-star in Very Special Envoys, Nick Nolte "a disgusting being, he seems to do everything and on purpose to be repellent". The feeling, already little existing on the screen, was null away from the camera. Julia did everything to avoid shooting the kissing scenes with Nolte, but in the end she was forced to shoot at least one (the only one in the film): the result, however, was bad. Ryan Gosling, on the other hand, hated Rachel McAdams so much that he left the room every time she entered. And in order not to kiss her on the set of The pages of our lives, he asked that she be fired and replaced with another actress. In hindsight, it was just love skirmishes: the couple has been together for more than two years.
