Neal McDonough Says “Hollywood Completely Turned On Me” Due To No-Kiss Rule

Neal McDonough said he “lost everything” for refusing to do kissing scenes.

The 59-year-old actor, married to Ruvé McDonough since 2003, claims Hollywood “turned” on him, which led to difficulties securing acting roles because of his position on on-screen kissing.

Speaking in a new clip from the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast, obtained by TMZ, Neal said: “I’d always had in my contracts that I wouldn’t kiss another woman onscreen. My wife didn’t have a problem with it, it was me really who had a problem with it. They couldn’t understand it. Hollywood just completely turned on me and they wouldn’t let me be part of the show anymore. And for two years, I couldn’t get a job, and I lost everything you could possibly imagine.

“Not just houses and material things but your swagger, your cool, who you are, your identity, everything. My identity was an actor and a really good one. And once you don’t have that identity, you’re kind of lost in a tailspin and I was lost in a big ugly tailspin for a couple of years.”

The First Contact actor finally had his first on-screen kiss in his latest movie The Last Rodeo, after convincing his wife Ruvé to play his onscreen love interest.

He told Fox News Digital: “I’ve been riding horses my whole life, so to jump into this saddle is different because I’ve never really been in this type of saddle before. I’ve not been the hero of the movie. I’ve never been in the position where I get to kiss the girl in the end because, as everyone knows, I won’t kiss another woman on screen.

“I convinced my wife, Ruvé. I said, ‘Honey, you have to be in the film because I have to kiss the girl in the end.’ She’s like, ‘I don’t know how to act.’ I’m like, ‘Well, you do now.’

“Ups and downs, the hard times I went through because of choices I’ve made, now are all in the rearview mirror.”

This isn’t the first time the band of brothers star has mentioned how his personal rules have impacted his career. He once stated that he was dismissed from “Scoundrels” in 2010 for not wanting to film intimate scenes with a co-actor.

“It was a horrible situation for me,” he told Closer Weekly in 2019. “After that, I couldn’t get a job because everybody thought I was this religious zealot. 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.”