Screen chemistry is a manufactured product. It is built out of lighting, editing, a decent score and two professionals doing their job on a set with forty other people watching. Sometimes the people involved genuinely liked each other. Sometimes one of them had a cold, or a mouthful of onion water, and got on with it anyway.
Here are nine cases where an actor said out loud that the famous kiss was not the highlight of their week.
1. Alyson Hannigan and Jason Segel
[IMAGE 1 — sitcom-style set, couple on a couch]
Fans of How I Met Your Mother sometimes noticed that Lily and Marshall, supposedly the show’s great romance, weren’t especially physical. Hannigan has explained why: Segel was smoking at the time, and kissing him reminded her of an ashtray. She reportedly even tried to bribe him into quitting, with limited success.
2. Thandiwe Newton and Tom Cruise
[IMAGE 2 — action movie set, dramatic lighting]
The romance in Mission: Impossible 2 looked, on screen, entirely convincing. Newton has since described the actual kiss in distinctly unromantic terms — a bit icky, and a bit wet. As reviews go, it’s short and it’s devastating.
3. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence
[IMAGE 3 — two actors at a press junket]
This one Cooper volunteered himself, on The Graham Norton Show. While filming Silver Linings Playbook, Lawrence informed him that he was a wet kisser. He noted, accurately, that it was not intended as a compliment.
4. Kirsten Dunst and Brad Pitt
[IMAGE 4 — gothic period film aesthetic]
Dunst was eleven when she filmed Interview with the Vampire, and she said at the time that kissing Pitt felt like kissing an older brother. Asked about it years later, she stood by every word — pointing out that an eleven-year-old enjoying it would have been the genuinely alarming outcome.
5. Morena Baccarin and Ryan Reynolds
[IMAGE 5 — superhero costume detail, mask and suit]
Not a personal complaint so much as a materials one. Kissing Reynolds in full Deadpool costume meant kissing a mask, and Baccarin’s description of the experience involved a large quantity of latex. Romance dies quickly in the presence of a full-face rubber suit.
6. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams
[IMAGE 6 — rain-soaked romantic movie scene]
The most-quoted kiss in modern romance cinema came out of a set the two reportedly did not enjoy sharing. Director Nick Cassavetes later said Gosling asked, at one point, for McAdams to be replaced because the scenes weren’t working. They stayed, they finished the film, and The Notebook became The Notebook.
7. Everyone who kissed Jon Hamm on Mad Men
[IMAGE 7 — 1960s office set, whisky and cigarettes]
Hamm has been upfront about the occupational hazard here. Don Draper smoked and drank more or less continuously, which on set meant herbal cigarettes and, standing in for whisky, onion water. The combination did not do wonderful things to his breath, and his co-stars had to work through it repeatedly.
8. Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson
[IMAGE 8 — vintage circus setting]
Nothing personal on this one either. Both actors were ill while shooting the romantic scenes in Water for Elephants, which turned the big moment into an exchange of germs. Witherspoon has been cheerfully blunt about how unappealing it was.
9. Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson
[IMAGE 9 — young actors on a film set]
Lawrence appears twice on this list, once as critic and once as defendant. She and Hutcherson filmed their Hunger Games kiss early in both their careers and have both described it, with unusual agreement, as sloppy. At least they were honest about it together.
The takeaway
None of this makes the scenes worse. If anything it makes them more impressive. The next time a film convinces you that two people are hopelessly in love, remember that at least one of them may have been holding their breath.
