15 Actors Who Have Talked Candidly About How Awkward It Was Having Their First Kiss Ever Be With A Costar

Saoirse Ronan was so nervous filming her first kiss that she asked the director how long she had to kiss the other actor for, and she made sure it only lasted three seconds.

There are spoilers for several movies and shows ahead!

1. First, Josh Hutcherson's first kiss was on camera when he starred in Little Manhattan in 2005 opposite Charlie Ray. "I was 11 years old. I was filming in New York City and my mom was up there with me, and she surprised me by flying my dad in because I had to do the kiss scene," Josh recalled. "I needed to have my dad there [to] support me and stuff."

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"But it was horrible," he added. "It was a horrible first kiss because I had, like, a crew of 50 people standing around watching me. It was the most non-real, not intimate moment that I could possibly have for my first kiss, I think."

2. Years before starring together on The Big Bang Theory, Mayim Bialik and Johnny Galecki shared an onscreen kiss when Johnny guest-starred on Blossom in 1991. "It might've been my first real-life kiss also," Mayim revealed.

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Both Mayim and Johnny were 14 years old at the time, and Johnny said it was both their first time kissing someone on screen. 

In an interview on CONAN when discussing their first kiss, Mayim and Johnny hilariously re-created it and made out after a commercial break.

3. Selena Gomez had her first kiss while guest-starring on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. "It was my first kiss...[and it happened] ON CAMERA," Selena recalled when discussing how she kissed Dylan Sprouse in a scene. "It was one of the worst days of my life."

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Selena told the story on The Kelly Clarkson Show after revealing she had recently got to visit her childhood home and found that she'd written in her closet that she was in love with Cole Sprouse. 

"Cole Sprouse was on Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and I was obsessed with that show, and I thought we were going to be together one day. Then, I guest-starred on the show, and I kissed his brother and I didn't get to kiss Cole," she said.

4. Brenda Song also had her first kiss on the set of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody when she was 16 years old. She said, "Ben [Ziff] played London's first love. I can't really rate it. I just remember being like, 'Sorry, Ben.' It was so awkward."

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She continued, saying, "It wasn't just my first kiss, it was my first TEN kisses! I was so worried the night before. Ben was really sweet because he made jokes about it and made me feel really comfortable."

Brenda said she knew "probably two weeks ahead of time" that the kiss was going to happen in the Season 1 episode, and she "kept dreaming that [she] would be horrible," and everyone in her life was giving her advice.

5. Saoirse Ronan's first kiss happened when she was 11 years old while filming her first movie, I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007). "I was, like, a proper prude as well. I was, like, not ready to kiss a boy myself," Saoirse said. She added that she asked writer and director Amy Heckerling to walk her through the "logistics" of the kissing scene before it happened.

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Saorise recalled that after Amy said she should just say her lines and then kiss the boy, Saoirse asked her, "No, no, no. But, like, how long do you want me to kiss him for?" 

She added, "I asked her how many seconds I had to kiss this poor boy for. It was three seconds. I'd say we did about eight takes. But hands down, every one of those takes consisted of a three-second kiss."

6. Kirsten Dunst's first kiss was when she was only 11 years old, and it was with then-31-year-old Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire. Looking back on filming the scene in 2021, Kirsten said it was "the worst thing [she] did" as she detailed how uncomfortable it was to suddenly have to kiss someone she saw as "a brother" at such a young age.

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Over the years, Kirsten has continuously called out how uncomfortable kissing Brad was when she was only 11. Way back in 1994, she sensibly reacted to an interviewer asking if she liked kissing Brad by saying, "I mean, I'm 12. And he's, like, 31, and it's like, he's a man. So why would I enjoy kissing him?"

In 2009, Kirsten reflected on the scene as well, adding, "Kissing Brad was so uncomfortable for me."

7. Millie Bobby Brown had her first kiss on the set of Stranger Things Season 1 when she had to kiss Finn Wolfhard in a scene. She said, "It was definitely strange. It was, like, my first kiss, so it was kind of weird. But then, like, when I'd done it, I thought, 'Wow. It makes sense for the storyline.'" Millie also recalled that she reacted quite badly after the kiss and said, "Kissing sucks."

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In 2022, during Vanity Fair's lie detector test interview, Millie was asked about kissing Finn and if his kissing has improved since their first kiss, to which she responded, "Not with me, no."

Then, Finn reacted to the viral clip of Millie, saying, "My first onscreen kiss was with Millie, but I didn’t know how to approach that in any way. It was just like, 'You’re gonna do this thing, and at the end of the take, you’re gonna kiss her.' So I almost headbutted her."

8. Sadie Sink also had her first kiss on screen during Stranger Things Season 2 when she had to kiss Caleb McLaughlin. "You can see it on Netflix," she exclaimed when talking about the moment. Sadie continued, saying, "We were both awkward, but it was also funny because all our friends were there and all these extras and lights and music."

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Sadie added, "It was nerve-racking at the time, but I look back now and can laugh about it."

Caleb's first kiss was also when he kissed Sadie in the Season 2 finale of Stranger Things. He recalled, "Everyone's like waiting for it to happen. It's a lot of kids like, 'Oooh, you’re gonna kiss her!' And I'm like, 'Bro, stop. We're acting. You're making it bigger than it actually has to be.'"

9. Keke Palmer had her first kiss "in life" with Corbin Bleu when they filmed Jump In (2007). "I was about 12 in that clip. 12 years old ... Even though that wasn't my real first kiss, it was still my actual first kiss," Keke explained when discussing how even though it was for a movie, it still felt real.

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She continued, saying, "I remember having a conversation with, I think it might've been the director or somebody I was working with on the film at the time, that just told me that I don't have to own it as that. That I could, you know, separate the two and kind of introducing to me the boundaries you have to have between yourself and your characters."

Keke added, "But it was my first kiss, and I remember just feeling excited, and it was cool because I had a cool person to kiss. Corbin's pretty good-looking. But at the same time, it was like, Oh my gosh, I'm scared. I'm 12. I'm a little kid, really."

10. Macaulay Culkin's first kiss was on screen in My Girl in 1991 when he kissed Anna Chlumsky. In an interview, he recalled, "I did not want to do that. We were friends. We got along, but I was like, Ew! A girl. I have to kiss a girl?!"

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In an interview from set in 1991, Macaulay and Anna were asked how filming the scene went, and she playfully said, "Yuck." With Macaulay adding, "We'll have to do it the whole day."

11. When Katherine Heigl was only 14 years old, she starred in My Father the Hero (1994), where she kissed then-22-year-old Dalton James. Looking back on the film, Katherine said, "It was one of my first kisses. It's very strange in retrospect. At the time, it was a dream come true."

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In terms of the film's premise as a whole, which sees Katherine's character pretending that her dad is her lover in order to impress a boy, Katherine said she doesn't think the film could be made today.

"It would never happen. I watched it recently with my 14-year-old niece, and I was like, 'This is really inappropriate!'," Katherine added.

12. Kristen Stewart's first kiss was on screen in the 2004 movie Undertow alongside Jamie Bell. "It was a bit of a peck, but I was 13 or 14. I was so nervous. I was freaking out," Kristen said. She added Jamie felt "safe," which helped.

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She recalled filming the moment, saying, "And then the director, he could tell I was just red and fucking non-responsive. And he was like, ‘It’s just little butterfly kisses.’ And I was like, ‘That didn’t help! Whatever that means, I don’t understand it!'"

13. Danielle Fishel shared her very first kiss with Ben Savage on Boy Meets World. In an interview in 2022, she shared, "I had never kissed anyone in my entire life. It was made even more difficult by the fact that Topanga was so self-assured and Topanga was so confident in her decision to kiss Cory."

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Danielle also said when they filmed the episode her grandparents were in the live-studio audience. She recalled, "Not only had I never kissed anybody before, but I had certainly never kissed anybody in front of a live studio audience that's also housing my grandparents and parents. Like, everyone is there."

She also said they didn't rehearse the kiss at all before it happened on screen because no one wanted to make these two 12-year-olds kiss off-screen and make it more uncomfortable. She added, "Also, they wanted that nervous energy because it is supposed to be Cory's first kiss. And so by the time we got to tape night, I thought for sure there was no way I was getting out of that without peeing my pants."

14. Dakota Fanning shared her first kiss with Thomas Curtis when they played younger versions of Reese Witherspoon and Josh Lucas' characters in Sweet Home Alabama (2002). She said, "I was seven years old, he was 10, it was very, you know, it was nerve-racking."

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Recalling what happened behind the scenes during the kissing scene, Dakota told W Magazine, "My studio teacher, who was my teacher my whole life before I went to high school, she was with me on that movie, and she told this story all the time. In between each take, we would do the kiss, right, and then I would slowly turn away and wipe my mouth off so he couldn’t see or so no one could see because I was trying to be kind, but I wasn’t really into it."

15. And finally, Zendaya actually refused to have her first kiss be onscreen while she was starring in Shake It Up. She recalled, "I remember being on Shake It Up and being like, 'I'm not gonna do this. I'm going to kiss him on the cheek because I haven’t been kissed yet, so I don’t want the kiss to be on camera.'"

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Recently with the release of both Dune: Part Two and Challengers, Zendaya has been consistently asked what it's like kissing her costars, more so than any other actor because her relationship with Tom Holland is so public. 

Speaking about the attention her onscreen kisses get, Zendaya said, "It's very odd." She added, "I don't know if it's because they want it to be, like, a viral thing, I don't know. But I have noticed that."