Stars Get Real About Their Worst Onscreen Kisses

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Stars Get Real About Their Worst Onscreen Kisses: Kate Hudson, Miles Teller, Emma Watson, More

Not afraid to kiss and tell! Kate Hudson, Miles Teller and Emma Watson are just a few of the celebs who have spoken out about their worst onscreen kissing experiences, revealing some smooches aren’t all as magical as they look.

“Honestly, I feel like I kind of haven’t had the best kissers,” Hudson told Gwyneth Paltrow on an October 2020 episode of “The Goop Podcast,” before pointing to friend Matthew McConaughey as her worst.

The actress, who starred in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Fools Gold with the Texas native, explained that “there’s just something happening and there’s like snot or wind” whenever the two try to make out.

“Like when we were kissing, like, in the end of Fool’s Gold, we’re like in the ocean, we had the plane crash, he just had snot all over his face,” she added.

One month later, the Greenlights author responded to his costar’s comments, telling InStyle that “many” of the pair’s kisses “have been awkward” over the years.

“We’re still like, ‘Hey, can we ever get a kiss where it’s just like the temperatures [aren’t freezing]? The ocean’s not wiping us away? Nobody’s dropping stuff on us, above our head?’” he explained, noting there was a “lot of saltwater and snot” during the Fool’s Gold shoot.

McConaughey added: “So there were always, like, elements that made it harder … We never got to have our nice romantic kiss.”

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Teller revealed that he’s had bad kissing situations with longtime friend Shailene Woodley while working on many of their five films together — especially The Spectacular Now.

“I would be drinking a Gatorade right before a kissing scene. She would be like, ‘Are you serious? You’re gonna kiss me after that?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I am,’” he told Vulture in July 2013 of the pair’s pre-kiss banter. “She would take these herbal supplements, these Chinese herbal supplements, and they tasted like crap. And she would always eat them right before we had a kissing scene! We put stuff in our mouths so we could just offend each other.”

The Big Little Lies star agreed with Teller’s recollection of their set shenanigans, saying, “We’d have to kiss in a scene, and he’d be like, ‘Shay, you just ate dirt.’ And I’d be like, ‘Miles, you just ate licorice.’ It was just this ongoing back-and-forth.”

Watson, for her part, recalled not knowing what to do when she finally had to kiss Rupert Grint in the Harry Potter series, having become like family throughout the franchise’s 10 years of filming.

“[It] was the most horrible thing I’ve ever had to do,” she said during a 2009 appearance on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross. “It just felt like incest. That’s the only way I can describe it.”

Scroll down to see who Liam Hemsworth, Tobey Maguire, Selena Gomez and more stars identified as their worst onscreen kiss ever.

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Sally Field: Burt Reynolds

“Oh, boy. Should I really name names here. This is going to be a shocker. Burt Reynolds,” Field said of her worst costar kiss during a December 2022 appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen.  

The California native noted that although she dated Reynolds on and off for five years after meeting on the set of 1977’s Smokey and the Bandit, his kissing techniques were lacking. “I tried to look the other way and say, ‘That was just then,’” she explained. “It just was not something he did really well. Just a lot of drooling.”

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Kate Hudson: Matthew McConaughey

“Every time I kiss McConaughey, I mean, it’s like there’s just something happening and there’s like snot or wind,” Hudson told Paltrow during an October 2020 episode of “The Goop Podcast” podcast. “Like when we were kissing, like, in the end of Fool’s Gold, we’re like in the ocean, we had the plane crash, he just had snot all over his face.”

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Gwyneth Paltrow: Robert Downey Jr.

The Shakespeare in Love actress pointed to her Iron Man costar as a not-so-good kisser. “With Robert, like, when I kissed him, I was like, ‘You’ve got to me kidding me,’” Paltrow revealed on an October 2020 episode of “The Goop Podcast” podcast. “This is literally like kissing my brother.”

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Ashley Tisdale: Zac Efron

The Merry Happy Whatever actress revealed that her close bond with Efron made for an uncomfortable kiss when he guest starred on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody in 2006. “It’s the worst because I’m so close to him and he’s like my brother,” Tisdale told Elle in January 2020. “At the time, he was used to acting on, like, Warner Bros, which is The CW, and we were on Disney Channel.”

She recalled him trying to kiss her with his tongue, saying, “I was like, ‘Get away from me!’ I, like, closed my mouth so fast. I was like, ‘This is Disney Channel! We don’t kiss like that on Disney Channel!’ It’s just weird when you’re so close to somebody. We had already done [High School Musical]. I had known him for years before. That is why it was the worst. It’s just [that] we’re just too close.”

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Scott Foley: Tyra Banks

The Scandal alum named the supermodel as his worst-ever onscreen kissing partner while appearing on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen in February 2019. “She was just not into it,” he said about Banks’ Felicity smooch. “I think it was her first onscreen kiss, and I was so excited about it, but it was … a lot bigger than it needed to be or should have been.”

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Morena Baccarin: Ryan Reynolds

The Gotham alum is not a big fan of puckering up with her Deadpool costar. “I keep saying that kissing him in that mask is like kissing a giant latex condom,” Baccarin told People Now in May 2018. “It basically just smells like rubber the entire time.”

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Liam Hemsworth: Jennifer Lawrence

“Anytime I had to kiss Jennifer was pretty uncomfortable,” Hemsworth said on a November 2014 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “When you look at it on the outside, it looks like a great picture. She’s one of my best friends, I love her, but if we had a kissing scene, she would make a point of eating garlic or tuna fish or something that was disgusting. Right before the scene, she’d be like, ‘Yeah, I ate tuna,’ or ‘I had garlic, and I didn’t brush my teeth.’ And I’d be like, ‘Fantastic, I can’t wait to get in there and taste it!'”

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Dane Cook: Kate Hudson

The comedian called out Hudson for her bad breath when filming 2008’s My Best Friend’s Girl. “I think she purposely ate a feast of onions right before the scene,” Cook said during an October 2014 appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. “I had to burn her on that one.”

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Miles Teller: Shailene Woodley

Teller recalled that he and Woodley purposely ate different foods to “just offend each other” while filming The Spectacular Now. “She would take these herbal supplements, these Chinese herbal supplements, and they tasted like crap,” he told Vulture in July 2013. “And she would eat them right before we had a kissing scene.”

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Reese Witherspoon: Robert Pattinson

When filming 2011’s Water for Elephants, Pattinson had a “bad cold,” which led to an awkward makeout session for Witherspoon. “He did have a very runny nose,” she told MTV News in December 2010. “It wasn’t appealing. It wasn’t pleasant.”

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AnnaLynne McCord: Matt Lanter

McCord revealed that her 90210 love interest was “a really bad kisser [which] kind of sucks” during a March 2010 interview with HollywoodLife.

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Emma Watson: Rupert Grint

The Beauty and the Beast actress recalled the uncomfortable lead-up to kissing her longtime friend in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. “I was like, ‘Do I use tongue? Do I cover my teeth? What do I do? Do I go first? Oh my God,’” she told MTV News in July 2009. “I ended up pouncing on Rupert. I was so desperate to get it over. After the first take, he was like, ‘Whoa, there! Where did that come from?’ I was like, ‘Sorry!'”

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Selena Gomez: Dylan Sprouse

When guest starring on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody in 2006, Gomez had to smooch Sprouse and it did not go as planned. “I actually leaned in to kiss him and I had my eyes closed a little too early and I ended up missing, like, half of his lips,” she told Tiger Beat in January 2009. “It ended up being the most awkward kiss in the world.”

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Alec Baldwin: Jennifer Aniston

The 30 Rock alum joked in November 2008 that his onscreen kiss with Aniston, when she played a woman stalking his character Jack Donaghy, was not pleasant. “It was painful,” he told New York Magazine at the time. “I mean, every man who’s had to makeout with her in TV and movies — I don’t know how they do it!”

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Tobey Maguire: Kirsten Dunst

Maguire’s iconic Spider-Man kiss with Dunst was anything but fun for the two actors. “I was hanging upside down, it was really late at night, it was raining, and the whole time I had rainwater running up my nose,” Maguire told Parade in April 2007. “Then, when Kirsten rolled back the wet mask, she cut off the air completely.”

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Hugh Grant: Julia Roberts

Grant recalled Roberts being “very big-mouthed” when they filmed 1999’s Notting Hill. “Literally, physically, she has a very big mouth,” he said during an October 2004 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. “When I was kissing her, I was aware of a faint echo.”