Epic kiss scenes are fun to watch, but actually filming them is a whole different thing. For some actors, on-screen smooching is just another mundane part of the job…others are more than happy to kiss and tell.
Here are 17 times celebs got real about kissing their costars on-screen:
1.
Heated Rivalry‘s Connor Storrie revealed that some of the kisses between him and Hudson Williams are improvised. “The things that aren’t fully scripted are some of our touches, some of our body kisses,” he said in an interview with Variety. “There’s a closed-mouth kiss. There’s an open-mouth kiss. There’s an open-mouth kiss with tongue. There’s a hardcore open-mouth, prolonged kiss with tongue. … All those little intricate kisses, touches in between moments, a lot of that is just us organically feeding into that moment.”
3.
Sophie Turner said that she and Kit Harington — who developed a close friendship after playing siblings Stansa and Jon Stark on Game of Thrones — were “both retching” while filming their kissing scenes for The Dreadful (2026). “I’m like, ‘Oh, shoot … that’s my brother,'” she recalled on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
4.
Sadie Sink and Millie Bobby Brown have both opened up about having had their first kisses on Stranger Things. “We were both awkward,” Sink, who had her first kiss on-screen with costar Caleb McLaughlin, shared in an interview with W Magazine. “But it was also funny because all our friends were there and all these extras and lights and music. It was nerve-wracking at the time, but I look back now and can laugh about it.”
5.
Bridgerton‘s Nicola Coughlan said she “felt like a teenager” getting ready to film her character Penelope’s first kiss with Colin (Luke Newton) in Season 3. “I felt like when I was about to have my real-life first kiss,” she said in an interview with Tudum. “[The stress] just had been building up. We’d known for four years that we were getting to this point … [I was like,] ‘What if I’m a horrible kisser?'”
6.
Ginny & Georgia star Sara Waisglass described filming scenes with Humberly González the, “most beautiful, wonderful experience,” gushing, “I could do a thousand kissing scenes with her, ’cause she is incredible….and a good kisser.”
7.
Morena Baccarin was not a fan of kissing Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool 2 (2018). “I keep saying that kissing him in that mask is like kissing a giant latex condom,” she said in an interview with PEOPLE, laughing. “It basically just smells like rubber the entire time.”
8.
Joe Locke admitted he literally got scabs on his chin while filming Heartstopper Season 3 because he and Kit Connor had so many kissing scenes. “We were kissing so much that [the scab] wasn’t healing so it was getting worse and worse,” he shared in an interview with GQ. “All the scenes that are filmed in Charlie’s house, if you look closely, either you can see the scab or my chin is really smooth. They had to VFX it out because it was so bad. The day of, everyone was like, ‘It’s fine. Honestly, Joe, on camera, it looks fine.’ But clearly it didn’t, because they fully just smoothed out my chin.”
9.
Penn Badgley had mixed feelings about kissing Blake Lively on Gossip Girl, whom he also dated for a while off-screen. “I’d say best [kiss]… was [Blake Lively], because we actually had a relationship at the time,” he said in an interview with E! News. “And worst? Maybe Blake after we broke up.”
10.
Ethan Hawke couldn’t get enough of kissing his Taking Lives (2004) co-star Angelina Jolie. “With all due respect … I will say the best on-screen kiss I’ve ever had is Angelina Jolie,” he said on an episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. “When she kisses you, you don’t know your name. I’m just telling the truth here.”
11.
Liam Hemsworth described kissing Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games films as “pretty uncomfortable,” sharing 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.”
12.
Zac Efron called his on-screen kiss with Zendaya in The Greatest Showman (2017) his “favorite,” gushing, “This might be my favorite kiss, I think ever. Just because at this point for these characters, it’s so built up, the tension between them is so strong, and literally, just a glance between them is electric. And when they finally have the courage in that moment to finally connect and get that kiss, it’s that epic musical moment.”
13.
Emma Thompson revealed in an interview with BBC Radio 1 that her Angels in America costar Meryl Streep just might be her best on-screen kiss. “Meryl Streep’s a very good snogger,” she said. “I had to snog her in Angels in America, and she was method about it … There was no stone unturned, my God, that’s for sure.”
14.
School Spirits star Milo Manheim revealed the funny backstory behind his first on-screen kiss with Peyton List. “[A] great memory I have is when Peyton [List] and I were filming our kiss scene,” he said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “In between resetting up shots, we would go hang out in her trailer and her brother was there. I love her brother so much, Spencer. He was like ‘I’m bored. Can I come watch?’ and Peyton kept on being like ‘No!’ I was like ‘Yeah. Bro, come on! It’ll be great!'”
15.
Jake Gyllenhaal said that the late Heath Ledger “almost broke my nose” while filming a kissing scene for Brokeback Mountain (2005), recalling, “He grabs me and he slams me up against the wall and kisses me. And then I grab him and I slam him up against the wall and I kiss him. And we were doing take after take after take … We had other scenes where we fought each other and I wasn’t hurting as badly as I did after that one.”
16.
Emma Watson said she ended up “pouncing” on Rupert Grint while filming their big kiss for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows — Part 2 (2011): “I was like, ‘Do I use tongue?’ Do I not use tongue? Do I cover my teeth? What do I do? Do I go first? Oh my God!’ 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!'”
17.
And lastly, Lili Reinhart revealed an interesting behind-the-scenes fact about all those kissing scenes on Riverdale. “You can only be so much of an adult on a CW show,” she said on an episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, “because you’re not even really allowed to kiss with tongue.”
