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Actors Who Hated Kissing Each Other On Screen

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Some of Hollywood’s most talked-about kisses were miserable to actually film.

Every romantic blockbuster sells the fantasy of two stars falling into each other’s arms, cameras rolling, sparks flying. The reality on set is often the opposite — mismatched chemistry, bad breath, colds, and old grudges turning a scripted kiss into something actors dreaded shooting. Nicki Swift’s video rundown of “Actors Who Were Nauseated Kissing One Another On Screen” collects the receipts, and several of the stories are far uglier than the finished scenes ever let on.

• Tony Curtis compared kissing Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot (1959) to “kissing Hitler,” blaming her demeanor and constant filming delays.
• Liam Hemsworth said Jennifer Lawrence would eat garlic or tuna right before their kissing scenes in The Hunger Games just to mess with him.
• Ryan Gosling reportedly tried to get Rachel McAdams replaced during The Notebook (2004) after the two clashed off-camera.

Chemistry Issues Disrupt Filming

Marilyn Monroe’s habit of arriving late and needing dozens of takes wore on her Some Like It Hot co-star, and Tony Curtis didn’t hold back describing what it was like locking lips with her — the “kissing Hitler” line has followed the film for decades as one of the more brutal on-set assessments an actor has ever given a co-star. Rupert Grint and Emma Watson had the opposite problem going into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. The two had literally grown up together on the franchise, so shooting Ron and Hermione’s long-promised kiss felt less like romance and more like kissing a sibling — awkward for reasons that had nothing to do with hygiene or attitude.

Illness, Smoke, and Bad Timing

Sometimes the problem was purely physical. Reese Witherspoon had to push through love scenes with Robert Pattinson on Water for Elephants (2011) while he was battling a severe cold, leaving her dealing with his constant sniffing and a runny nose in close-up. Tobey Maguire’s upside-down, rain-soaked kiss with Kirsten Dunst in 2002’s Spider-Man looked iconic on screen but was genuinely distressing to film — water kept pouring into his nose while the mask restricted his breathing. Alyson Hannigan had a similar aversion to kissing her How I Met Your Mother co-star Jason Segel, whose heavy cigarette habit made those scenes far less appealing than they looked on air.

Tony Curtis said kissing Marilyn Monroe was “like kissing Hitler.”

Real Life Tension Influences Performances

Not every uncomfortable kiss came down to breath mints or bugs. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams famously did not get along while shooting The Notebook, with tension running so hot that Gosling pushed to have McAdams swapped out before the two ultimately worked through it and delivered the film’s signature romantic moments. Jennifer Lawrence took a more mischievous route with Liam Hemsworth during The Hunger Games, deliberately loading up on garlic or tuna fish right before their scenes just to throw him off — a prank that turned supposedly tender moments into an endurance test for her co-star. The video also touches on other uneasy pairings, including Joanna Lumley and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, Dane Cook and Kate Hudson in My Best Friend’s Girl, and Thandie Newton and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 2 — proof that even the most polished romantic pairings on the poster can hide a rough day on set.

If there’s a throughline in all of it, it’s that the camera can’t tell the difference between real chemistry and two professionals gritting their way through a scene — which is exactly why stories like Curtis’s “kissing Hitler” line and Gosling nearly getting McAdams pulled from The Notebook still get passed around set visits and interviews years later. For anyone who’s ever wondered why some co-stars seem to avoid each other at premieres, this is usually the answer. Fans looking for more on-set fallout between stars can check out Celebs Who Started Out Friends And Ended Up Enemies, or for a different kind of behind-the-scenes reveal, see David Arquette Confirms What We Suspected About Working With Courteney Cox.