Movie Kisses That Got Actors In Real-Life Trouble

Movie kisses are pretty much as old as the medium itself. From the early days of Hollywood, actors have been locking lips on the big screen, with some of these moments becoming iconic. From Humphrey Bogart kissing Ingrid Bergman as if it were the last time in "Casablanca" to Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire's upside down kiss in "Spider-Man," a memorable smooch can make a movie — but it can also lead to trouble for the actors involved.

Of course, everyone loves a happy ending, and many on-screen romances lead to just that. Sometimes the romantic tension between actors really shows, and usually those movies end up being the ones that audiences fall in love with. Not every movie is so fortunate, though, and there have been plenty of times when an on-screen romantic moment has sent audiences running for the hills — or worse, for their pitchforks. The following movie kisses got actors in real-life trouble, and that trouble got more attention than the movie itself in several cases.

"Blank Check" is a movie that pushes its ridiculous premise to the absolute breaking point. 12-year-old Preston Waters (Brian Bonsall) just happens to wind up holding a stolen check for $1 million and goes on an over-the-top spending spree while pretending to be employed by a wealthy businessman. Preston is pursued by undercover FBI agent Shay Stanley (Karen Duffy), who's posing as a bank teller. Bizarrely, she goes on a date with young Preston and kisses him by the time everything gets wrapped up. 

The film was derided by critics when it debuted in 1994. One reviewer for The New York Times wrote, "It's a movie that no parents in their right minds should let children see." That reviewer rightfully pointed out that Preston's misadventures are almost unbelievably childish, but the movie still puts a lightly romantic spin on his relationship with Shay. In the streaming era, "Blank Check" managed to reignite some controversy, as people started queuing it up and then remembered just how weird the movie is.

Reddit threads started popping up with viewers arguing whether or not the movie could get made today, and when it landed on Disney+, some online writers immediately called out the entire Preston/Shay relationship. "It's not cute," wrote WJBQ. "It's predatory and really strange!" With the controversy building, Bonsall took to the Facebook to let everyone know that he "had an absolute blast filming this movie" and that he's happy people are rediscovering "Black Check" today.

Ten years after "Blank Check" made people deeply uncomfortable, another movie in which an adult actor has a strange relationship with a much younger co-star came out. Director Jonathan Glazer's "Birth" stars Nicole Kidman as a widow named Anna. A decade after her husband's death, Anna is getting ready to remarry when a young boy, played by Cameron Bright, enters her life claiming to be the reincarnation of her late husband. Anna doesn't believe him at first, but the youngster knows things about her marriage that he shouldn't.

"Birth" received mostly negative reviews, in large part because of the awkwardness of Anna's relationship with Bright's mysterious character. "It's corny, plodding, implausible and — on occasion — seriously creepy," said Jack Mathews in a review for the New York Daily News, while Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly wrote: "All I could think was, What in God's name do the filmmakers think they're doing?"

Kidman received some criticism for even taking the role, which she acknowledged when speaking about "Birth" at the Venice International Film Festival. According to Australia's ABC News, Kidman said, "It wasn't about, 'Oh I want to make a film where I get to kiss a 10-year-old boy'. To me it was I wanted to make a film where you're trying to understand love." Kidman also had to push back against rumors that an international cut of the film contained even more questionable scenes between her character and Bright's. 

1971's "Harold and Maude" is known as a cult classic these days, having managed to overcome the controversy that surrounded it upon its release. This is yet another film marked by romantic interests with a big age gap, but at least this time around nothing about the relationship is illegal. "Harold and Maude" stars Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon as the titular couple. Harold is a 20-year-old oddball who's so obsessed with death that he stages fake suicides and attends funerals for fun. He meets 79-year-old Maude at a funeral and, despite the massive age gap, the two end up falling in love.

The film's road to the big screen was a bumpy one. Director Hal Ashby clashed with execs at Paramount after they took control of the edit away from him, something that didn't sit right with Cort. The young actor told big wigs at the studio that he wouldn't do any press for the film if they didn't give control back to Ashby, and they relented — though only if Ashby removed a kissing scene between Harold and Maude. According to The Guardian, Paramount boss Robert Evans "hated" the scene so much that he wouldn't budge on it, no matter what Cort said. The actor's relationship with the studio was soured after that, though he eventually worked with Paramount again many years later.

"Howard the Duck" didn't spark the same level of outrage as most of the other movies on this list, but it haunted the careers of Lea Thompson and Chip Zien for years. This bizarre Marvel movie sees the titular character (Zien) travel from his home on Duckworld to Earth. There he meets Beverly Switzler (Thompson) and strikes up a surprising romance while trying to save the world from an alien invasion.

There were high expectations for the film, but when it debuted in 1986, "Howard the Duck" was a total flop. The bad jokes, poor plotting, and Howard's lifeless design all had a role to play in the movie's failure, but the romance between Howard and Beverly really sealed the deal. The two share an intimate moment in bed complete with a kiss, and even though it gets interrupted, it's still an image you can't scrub from your brain.

This scene became notorious, and both Thompson and Zien were left a bit distraught by the overall reception. "There is no way to be an artist and put your heart into something and not be hurt when people say terrible things," Thompson told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. In the same interview, Zien said, "It was unbelievably depressing." Though they were the butt of many jokes, both actors thankfully managed to continue leading successful careers, and they both said they look back on "Howard the Duck" with more fondness than they used to.

Jonah Hill's directorial debut was well received by critics and general moviegoers, but "Mid90s" still caught some flak for a particularly uncomfortable kissing scene that comes fairly early in the movie. In the scene, 13-year-old Stevie, aka Sunburn (Sunny Suljic), is at a party drinking and smoking with his friends when he meets Estee (Alexa Demie), who is obviously much older than him. Estee doesn't mind Sunburn being younger, and she eventually takes him into a bedroom where the two of them have sex.

The scene has received some heavy criticism, even within the context of the rest of the movie. The fact that the actors kissed despite Suljic being just 11 years old at the time of filming led to a lot of conversation on Reddit, with u/Octoire writing: "I'm not even looking at Estee 100%, the actress does have her responsibility and she was completely in the wrong to go through with something so incredibly terrible, but why is no one holding Jonah Hill accountable?"

Hill addressed the scene during an interview with Slate magazine, saying that it was supposed to be an accurate depiction of how things were in the 1990s. "To me, showing it as harsh and as honest as it was back then was the point," he said. "That sexuality at that time period, in this story that I'm telling, is not about two people connecting, which is what it should be about. It's about the currency it gives you in a group of male friends at that age. And I feel that is something that is problematic, which is why I showed it so explicitly."

Sometimes a movie kiss doesn't cause any public trouble but still manages to disrupt an actor's personal life. That's what happened to Billy Bob Thornton when he was working on the 2001 drama "Monster's Ball." The movie follows a prison guard named Hank (Thornton) who strikes up an affair with a widow named Leticia (Halle Berry) while grieving the loss of his son. The two are united by grief, but the relationship becomes more complicated when Hank realizes that he oversaw the execution of Leticia's late husband. 

Critically and financially, "Monster's Ball" was a success, but privately, it caused a ton of stress for Thornton. According to Yahoo! News, Thornton told The Sun that working on the movie put strain on his marriage to Angelina Jolie. "Other people's situations are hard, with areas of doubt," Thornton said. "But if you are a thousand miles from home on a film set simulating sex with a beautiful woman, it's even tougher."

According to Berry, who won an Oscar for her turn as Leticia, the film's famous sex scene was a necessary part of the narrative. When the BBC called the scene "very graphic" during an interview with the actor, she fired back with: "I like to call that scene the kiss of life, because from that moment on the choices that these characters made indelibly affected their life and made them able to have a better one. The scene wasn't about sexual titillation in any way."

Over the years, there have been some movies that caused a big stir simply because of the way they handled certain kissing scenes. Keira Knightley found herself in the crosshairs of some moviegoers because she starred in a film that dared to include any kissing whatsoever. It turns out that fans of 19th-century literature can be pretty brutal, and some of them really weren't thrilled to see Knightley's Elizabeth Bennet locking lips with Matthew Macfadyen's Mr. Darcy in 2005's "Pride & Prejudice."

The movie was well received, but some diehard Jane Austen fans couldn't stand the changes introduced by the adaptation. They were especially upset by the alternate ending included in the U.S. release that showed Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy kissing. According to The New York Times, a former head of the Jane Austen Society of North America said the movie "has nothing at all of Jane Austen in it." To this day, the ire directed at Knightley in particular is so intense that nearly twenty years later arguments about whether or not she was good in the role still break out on the Jane Austen subreddit.

There's been no shortage of complaints about Disney's "Star Wars" sequel trilogy, and while plenty of the criticism can be written off as hateful viewers dogpiling, there are some moments in the sequels that feel genuinely out of place. Near the end of "Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker," Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) share a kiss that seemingly comes out of nowhere. The scene went too far according to some people, but who is to blame for the divisive moment? Well, fans have pointed the finger at just about everyone involved in the production at various points.

Ridley, who often bore the brunt of the complaints about all three movies, told Variety that even years later is it "still upsetting" to her, adding: "You don't want people to feel like you've not served the thing they're a fan of." In her view, though, the kiss between Rey and Kylo had been properly built up. "My feeling in that moment was that it was a goodbye, and that felt earned," she said. "You can call a kiss a thousand things, but I felt it was a goodbye." Ridley's comments probably aren't going to change many minds, but as the years wear on, fans are slowly getting past the moment.

A movie set kiss almost caused actor Tommy Davidson and A-list star Will Smith to come to blows. Davidson told the story in his memoir "Living in Color: What's Funny About Me." The incident happened while Davidson was filming the 1998 romantic comedy "Woo" with Smith's wife Jada Pinkett Smith, which famously ends with their characters dancing in the street and kissing. However, the ending wasn't always going to be that way.

Davidson wrote in his memoir that he and Pinkett Smith weren't happy with the movie's ending, so they convinced the producers to close on the dance scene instead. Davidson himself came up with the idea for the kiss, but he didn't tell Pinkett Smith what he was thinking. "I didn't know this: You have to rehearse a kiss," Davidson wrote (per People). "You can't just spring it on your co-star." According to Davidson, it's something that Will Smith made sure he never forgot.

After shooting the scene, an enraged Smith apparently followed Davidson to his trailer and started yelling at him. He was understandably upset about his partner being kissed without her consent, and things nearly got physical. "There was a moment there when we might have come to blows," Davidson revealed in his book. "My reactive fight-or-flight instinct was triggered and I could have exploded." Luckily, Smith's wife stepped in and defused the situation, and this particular disaster was averted.

The hit Indian film "Punnagai Mannan" came out nearly 40 years ago, but one of the movie's most touching scenes has stirred up controversy again and again. The scene is between star-crossed lovers played by Kamal Haasan and Sumathi Josephine, better known by her stage name Rekha. Because their families don't approve of their relationship, they decide to jump off a cliff, though before they fall to their deaths, they share a kiss. It's an emotional moment, but it wasn't actually consensual. Rekha has revealed that she had no idea Haasan was going to kiss her during the scene, and that she would have refused the kiss had she been made aware.

This controversy came back up in 2020 when Rekha (who was just 16 when she made the movie) was asked about the incident during an interview with The News Minute. "They shot the scene without me knowing about it," she said. "The kiss didn't look ugly or aggressive on screen. There was a need for it, but I was a very young girl and I didn't know about it." She went on to say that she doesn't expect an apology after all these years, even though fans think she deserves one, and that she'd rather just never have to talk about the situation again. "People ask me the same question and I'm fed up of answering it," she added.