George Clooney shared that he will not be kissing girls on screen moving forward.
Clooney shared in an interview with the Daily Mail, “I’ve been trying to go the route Paul Newman did: ‘OK, well, I’m not kissing a girl any more.’”
It is unclear exactly why he’s making this decision, but he also commented that he had a conversation with his wife about aging when he turned 60. He said, “When I turned 60, I had a conversation with my wife. I said, ‘Look, I can still play basketball with the boys. I play with 25-year-old guys. I can still hang, I’m in shape. But in 25 years, I’m 85 years old. It doesn’t matter how many granola bars you eat, that’s a real number.’”
Clooney is not the only actor who does not engage in kissing women on screen any more. Neal McDonough told Closer Weekly back in 2019 that he won’t kiss any other woman except his wife, Ruvé. He said, “I won’t kiss any other woman because these lips are meant for one woman.”
During an appearance at The Orange Catholic Foundation, McDonough explained, “If I’m in bed with another woman, I don’t want my kids to see that. I don’t want my family to see that. I really don’t want God to see that.”
He elaborated on that decision in an appearance on the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast in 2021 saying, “I’d always had in my contracts I wouldn’t kiss another woman on screen.”
“My wife didn’t have any problem with it. It was me, really, who had a problem with it,” he continued. “When I couldn’t do it, and they couldn’t understand it, Hollywood just completely turned on me. They wouldn’t let me be part of the show anymore.”
In fact, he shared he was essentially blacklisted for about two years due to the decision, “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.”
When was the last time he was on screen? Not exactly a bold stance since the acting phase of his career is pretty much over.
What a wuss. Adam Sandler clearly was the real standout star in Jay Kelly, not George “The Coward” Clooney.