From Penn Badgley to Brad Pitt: 7 actors who refused to film kissing or s*x scenes in movies or shows

Actors like Brad Pitt, Penn Badgley, Kirk Cameron, and Neal McDonough among others have been known to have reservations about shooting particular sequences. Badgley initially decided not to engage in physical scenes in the thriller series You. Till the fourth season of the show, there were no explicit scenes of physical intimacy involving Penn Badgley.

However, with the premiere of the fifth season, the scenes became explicit. Speaking to People magazine on April 24, 2025, the actor said he had to take that clause off. He said:

“I had to throw that out the window. That was the question again. All right, what am I willing to do? And as I always said, I said, my desire is that least as possible, but if it's necessary, that's the show we all sign up to make. So, let's make sure it's vital, let's make sure it's important, it's deliberate. And we did.”

The US Weekly notes that while speaking to the Podcrushed podcast in 2023, Penn Badgley shared that he had asked the show's creator, Sera Gamble, if he could avoid doing any more intimate scenes.

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Besides Penn Badgley, here are six other actors who refused to do intimate scenes

As per reports, most actors refuse to partake in intimate scenes in shows and films to create boundaries. Here are six other actors who belong to this category, and some of them even had to face certain repercussions.

Neal McDonough

McDonough faced difficulty after he refused to perform intimate scenes on Scoundrels. The actor shared in a 2019 interview that he was caught off guard and found it difficult when he chose not to film intimate scenes with Virginia Madsen.

Afterward, he struggled to find work because many people assumed he was overly religious. He admitted that his faith and family were his top priorities and that he always put them before himself. Although those years were tough, he stayed committed to his values and eventually saw his career thrive.

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Brad Pitt

Per MoreMojo, Brad Pitt refused to kiss co-star Cate Blanchett in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This decision was made out of respect for Angelina Jolie, his partner at the time. Speaking to The Telegraph, Blanchett joked that seeing Pitt overly in love with Angelina Jolie was “disgusting.”

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Kirk Cameron

Kirk Cameron seems to be one of the actors who likes to stay devoted to his wife. As per US Weekly, he had made a promise not to kiss any woman other than his wife, Chelsea Noble. Speaking to uInterview in 2023, he said:

“So as an actor that may present a few roles that I'm not going to be able to get but in this movie, Fireproof, there was a very touching and romantic scene and in order to honor my own marriage.”

He went on:

“Chelsea and I, uh, worked out an arrangement with the producers for her to fly to the set and she wore the dress that the actress in the movie wore we shot the scene in a silhouette and were able to have a very touching romantic kiss.”

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Thandiwe Newton

Thandiwe Newton refused to kiss Gerard Butler on RocknRolla. Newton shared that Gerard Butler was quite sick during filming, so she refused to kiss him. As a result, director Guy Ritchie had to come up with a new plan on the spot, and despite the challenges, it turned into one of the best scenes in the movie.

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Jameela Jamil

Jameela Jamil is reportedly against doing physically intimate scenes. She shared in a May 2023 episode of Penn Badgley’s podcast that she didn’t audition for the latest season of his show because the role was too s**ual, and she felt too shy and uncomfortable with that kind of content.

She later joked that she didn’t realize it was even possible to set boundaries like that until Badgley publicly said he was no longer doing such scenes.

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Liam Hemsworth

Hemsworth once explicitly mentioned why he did not want to do a kiss scene in a movie. He mentioned to Jimmy Fallon that before their kissing scenes on The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence would deliberately eat things like garlic or tuna to mess with him. Unlike serious situations, this was more of a playful joke, and it didn’t stop him from working with her.