Neal McDonough maintained a strict kiss rule throughout his career, but broke it for 1 scene

Despite a Hollywood race that covers 35 years, Neal McDonough says he has never kissed a woman on the screen before, so far.

McDonough, whose credits include “Band of Brothers” and “Captain America: The First Avenger”, stars the Bull Riding Joe Wainwright champion in “The Last Rodeo”, released in May. In a Tiktok video posted that same month, the actor said he had been able to make an exception to his long commitment against love scenes and even kiss films by convincing his wife, Ruvé Robertson, to join the cast of the film.

“Many people out there have asked me what it is to have your first screen kiss, what I just did in ‘The Last Rodeo’,” McDonough explained. “The reason why it is so special to me, as everyone knows, I will not kiss another woman on the screen, but now I can kiss the only one, the only one, my best friend and the love of my life, Ruvé, who plays my wife, Rose.”

Describing both the film and his wife’s performance and “incredible,” he added: “Having my first screen kiss and playing the hero, and kissing the girl at the end, is something I have never done, but something that I have always wanted to do my whole career. Now I have to do it.”

Tiktok’s video reaction was mainly positive, and many fans praised the “integrity” of McDonough.

“The only man with a spine,” a person wrote.

He added another: “Beautiful. True love! The rest of Hollywood is garbage.”

McDonough and Robertson have married since 2003. The couple, who are devout Catholics, share five children.

McDonough has been Franco in his refusal to portray intimacy on the screen for some time. “If I’m in bed with another woman, I don’t want my children to see that,” he said while talking at an event of the Orange 2019 Catholic Foundation. “I don’t want my family to see that. I really don’t want God to see that.”

Paul Archuleta through Getty Images

Even so, Massachusetts’s native says that his adhesion to these guidelines has cost him a series of acting work over the years, especially in 2010, when, according to reports, he was eliminated from the cast of the “scoundrels” of ABC, starring Virginia Madsen.

“After that, I could not get a job because everyone thought it was this religious fanatic,” he told Closer Weekly in 2019. “I am very religious. I put God and the first family and my second. That is what I live. It was difficult for a few years.”

Others, however, have been willing to accommodate the stipulations. When McDonough joined “Desperate Housewives” for his fifth season in 2009, he said that the creator of the Marc Cherry series updated the script of the program so that his character, Dave Williams, did not have to kiss actor Nicollette Sheridan, who played Dave’s wife, Edie Britt.