You won’t believe THESE actors have had strictly ‘no-kissing policy’ on camera

Did you know actors like Penn Badgley, Julia Roberts, and Denzel Washington have refused kissing or get into intimate scenes with their on-screen partners?

Yes, actors also often have boundaries when it comes to intimate scenes and some may choose to limit their involvement in such scenes or negotiate specific conditions for filming due to personal comfort, or professional boundaries.

Let’s have a look at the names of few actors who have been known to refuse or limit kissing or intimate scenes with their on-screen partners:

Penn Badgley

The Gossip Girl alum opted to choose cutting back on his onscreen intimacy after getting married in 2017.

the Maryland native opened up about in an interview with Variety in 2023, “It’s not a place where I’ve blurred lines.”

Badgley went on to say, “There’s almost nothing I could say with more consecration. That aspect of Hollywood has always been very disturbing to me — and that aspect of the job, that mercurial boundary — has always been something that I actually don’t want to play with at all.”

However, a month later, the You actor argued that his comments were “blown out of proportion," telling GQ, “What I was speaking about wasn’t actually the final product. It was sort of, like, the culture inherent to the production of all movies but particularly those scenes. It’s like, look, we know that Hollywood has had a history of flagrant exploitation and abuse.”

Penn Badgley walked the decision back for season 5 of You.

Ian Somerhalder

Ian Somerhalder and Nina Dobrev, who dated and broke up throughout the course of The Vampire Diaries had a difficult situation once; kissing.

The status of their relationship purportedly didn’t have much to do with their refusal to kiss in the rain on the show and after the couple did it once, fans thought it was so hot they wanted more, however, they refused.

During the first rain scene, it was apparently so cold that Dobrev’s hair froze over and Somerhalder could barely move his jaw. It’s hard to kiss when you’re fighting off the chills.

Neal McDonough

According to McDonough, he won’t kiss any other woman because these lips are meant for one woman.

The Band of Brothers alum, who shares five children with his wife, shared during an interview with Closer in 2019 and previously claimed that he was fired from Scoundrels for his refusal to film sex scenes.

Lindsay Lohan

Lohan reportedly refused to do a kissing scene with her costar Charlie Sheen in the 2013 film, Scary Movie 5.

According to sources, the Freakier Friday actress opted not to kiss him due to concerns over Sheen's "wild partying past" and didn't want to kiss him due to fears of catching something.

The script initially had the two kissing three times, but Lohan's objections led to the producers rewriting the script and using body doubles for some scenes.

Apparently, that wasn't enough for Lohan though, as the script had to be rewritten to include less kissing, and a body double was brought in for the little that remained.

Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte were cast in the 1994 romantic comedy movie, I Love Trouble as rival reporters who are forced to work together.

From Roberts' tantrums to Nolte's machismo, the costars were constantly agitated with each other, in short forget kissing scenes.

Apparently, they were acting opposite stand-ins more often than not while the cameras were rolling and when they were together, were getting aggravated by writing duo Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers, who were trying to get the stars to improvise lines repeatedly.

While publicists tried to play this off as playful antics amongst co-stars, the award-winning actress stated that Nolte was "charming and nice, [but] he's also completely disgusting."

Denzel Washington

The legendary actor is for the culture! Denzel Washington refused to kiss Roberts. This all started when Washington attended a screening of his 1989 film, The Mighty Quinn due to concerns about alienating his core audience of Black women.

Washington wanted to avoid perpetuating the lack of representation of Black women as objects of desire on film and prioritised his loyalty to his Black female fans, believing they might react negatively to interracial on-screen kisses.

"Black women are not often seen as objects of desire on film," Washington said in a 2002 profile in Newsweek, adding, "They have always been my core audience."