Despite a Hollywood career spanning 35 years, Neal McDonough says he’s never kissed a woman on-screen before ― until now.
McDonough, whose credits include “Band of Brothers” and “Captain America: The First Avenger,” stars as bull riding champion Joe Wainwright in “The Last Rodeo,” released in May. In a TikTok video posted that same month, the actor said he’d been able to make an exception to his long-standing pledge against love scenes and even kissing in films by convincing his wife, Ruvé Robertson, to join the film’s cast.
“Many people out there have asked me what it’s like to have your first screen kiss, which I just did in ‘The Last Rodeo,’” McDonough explained. “The reason it’s so special to me, as everyone knows, I won’t kiss another woman on-screen, but now I get to kiss the one, the only, my best friend, and the love of my life, Ruvé, who plays my wife, Rose.”
Describing both the movie and his wife’s performance as “amazing,” he added: “To have my first screen kiss and to actually play the hero, and kiss the girl in the end, is something that I’ve never done, but something I’ve always wanted to do my whole career. Now I get to do it.”
Reaction to the TikTok video was mostly positive, with many fans praising McDonough’s “integrity.”
“The only man with a spine,” one person wrote.
Added another: “Beautiful. True love! The rest of Hollywood is trash.”
McDonough and Robertson have been married since 2003. The couple, who are devout Catholics, share five children.
McDonough has been outspoken in his refusal to portray intimacy on-screen for some time. “If I’m in bed with another woman, I don’t want my kids to see that,” he said while speaking at a 2019 Orange Catholic Foundation event. “I don’t want my family to see that. I really don’t want God to see that.”
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Still, the Massachusetts native says his adherence to those guidelines has cost him a number of acting jobs over the years, most notably in 2010, when he was reportedly axed from the cast of ABC’s “Scoundrels,” starring Virginia Madsen.
“After that, I couldn’t get a job because everybody thought I was this religious zealot,” he told Closer Weekly in 2019. “I am very religious. I put God and family first, and me second. That’s what I live by. It was hard for a few years.”
Others, however, have been willing to accommodate the stipulations. When McDonough joined “Desperate Housewives” for its fifth season in 2009, he said series creator Marc Cherry updated the show’s script so that his character, Dave Williams, wouldn’t have to kiss fellow actor Nicollette Sheridan, who portrayed Dave’s wife, Edie Britt.
