Veteran Hollywood actor Neal McDonough has opened up about how his unwavering commitment to his marriage once led to being blacklisted in Hollywood.
Speaking on the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast on Wednesday, the Band of Brothers and Yellowstone star revealed that he was sidelined from acting roles for refusing to kiss any woman other than his wife, Ruvé McDonough, in film and television.
McDonough, 58, said he always made it a clause in his contracts to avoid romantic or intimate scenes involving kissing, citing personal values and respect for his family.
“I always had in my contracts that 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,” he explained.
“I don’t want to put my kids through that, and I didn’t want to put my wife through it.”
However, his stance came at a great personal and professional cost.
“When I wouldn’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. And for two years, I couldn’t get a job. I lost everything — not just houses, but my swagger, my identity — everything.”
The actor recalled being fired from a TV show after refusing to wear a “modesty sock” for a simulated sex scene, triggering a lawsuit and deepening his professional exile.
“They said, ‘Unless you do it, we’re going to have to replace you.’
I said, ‘Then replace me.’ And they fired me,” he said.
At the time, McDonough feared his Hollywood career was over.
“I remember flying home from Albuquerque and realizing, ‘I’d have a better chance surviving in that desert than in Hollywood.’ And I was right.”
Still, McDonough said he has no regrets.
“I knew I did the right thing for my marriage. I knew I did the right thing for God. And I knew I did the right thing for me.”
This isn’t the first time the actor has spoken publicly about the incident. In a 2019 interview with Closer Weekly, he claimed he was fired from the ABC series Scoundrels in 2010 for refusing intimate scenes, noting that “everybody thought I was this religious zealot.”
His comeback came thanks to Graham Yost, the producer of Band of Brothers, who offered him a role in the hit series Justified.
Today, McDonough is taking full control of his story with The Last Rodeo, a new film he wrote, directed, and stars in. When the script called for kissing scenes, he cast his real-life wife as his on-screen partner.
“Well, my wife is really hot. She’s a good-looking woman,” he said.
“I said, ‘I’m not doing this movie unless you play my wife. Because I’m not going to kiss someone else on screen.’ And she said, ‘I’m not an actor.’ I said, ‘You are now.’”