I have been excited about kissing a costar precisely one time. One time! And it wasn’t even until after the fact! I won’t name names since I don’t want to embarrass him, but let me recount this tale quickly.
A couple of years ago I did a small role in an improvised film as a favor to a friend. I had a short scene with a handsome movie star. Our movie backstory was that we’d had a fling in the past, we were friendly now, and it was all a little flirtatious, but we weren’t serious about each other. There was no plan to kiss, just some light chat. As for my real-life backstory, I’d had a crush on this actor as a teenager, so maybe I should have been nervous and excited to work with him, BUT my character had to give him stitches. On his face. On his handsome movie-star face. I needed to concentrate on not drawing blood at any point. The only thing that stood between his face and the very sharp, very real needle in my hand was a layer of latex prosthetic, as thin as fresh prosciutto. I also knew that he was the kind of committed actor who wouldn’t stop a scene to say, “Ow. That’s my actual face you’re ripping into, so hey, maybe we should cut.”
Halfway through the evening, I still hadn’t permanently scarred any coworkers, and as we got more comfortable with the scene, the director leaned in and said, “It felt like you guys were going to kiss in that last take. I think it was a good instinct, maybe we should go with that.”
Okay. We each got a mint, and for a few takes we stumbled through the double awkwardness that is kissing onscreen without an exact cue to do it.
At the end of the night, I went home happy with the work we’d done and relieved that no flesh was harmed. I drove all the way home, pulled into my driveway, and, as I was putting the car in park, suddenly shrieked, “Oh my god, I just made out with Legolas!”
Again, I’m not going to name that actor, as I wish to respect his privacy.
Budget
Into the Woods was one of the biggest-budget films I’ve ever worked on. It made the production glorious. Every single detail in that film was designed with love and passion. The world created by Rob Marshall and his team was so rich, I felt inspired and grateful on a daily basis in a way that is VERY unusual for me. A larger budget enables a fully realized vision, but it inspires overcomplicated solutions to nonproblems. It also has some comical side effects.
There’s a scene in Into the Woods where Cinderella runs down the palace stairs, but Prince Charming has covered them in sticky tar to keep her from getting away. As that scene approached, someone asked me to try on my “magnet shoes.” “My what?” No one had bothered to ask me, but some mystery higher-up had assumed that I wouldn’t be able to “stop in my tracks” unassisted and tasked several departments with fitting both the stairs and my shoes with powerful electromagnets. The idea was to switch them on as I ran full speed down concrete steps.
Now, this was not only a spectacular waste of time and resources, it was kind of a fucking death trap. Even if it worked, I would surely be sent flying out of the shoes and into some corrective surgery. I had to do a couple of runs to prove to Rob that I could successfully mime being stuck in goo, and I let the special effects guys turn on the magnets when Cinderella struggles to pry her shoes up by hand, so that everyone could feel like Operation Electro-Murder had been a justifiable project.
My second-favorite thing about that scene was that Chris Pine, who played the prince, had to stand there THE WHOLE TIME. Both of us assumed he’d come in for an hour in the morning, they’d shoot some footage, and through movie magic, he would appear frozen in time at the top of the stairs. No such luck. Poor Chris had to stand there and watch me do that number a hundred times. I was running, crawling, falling down, jumping up, and belting my stupid face off for two days straight, and with every “action” he trudged back into position and endured another take.
I’ll admit I found the situation amusing. Every time he complained it just gave me an easy opening to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry that YOU had to work hard today. Can somebody get Chris a medal?”
Here’s the thing: I really felt for him. A long day at work is made abnormally grueling by an absence of productivity or accomplishment. For all the physical and mental energy I was expending (and the bruises I was getting), I left those two days so content and satisfied. He left them needing a burger just to get a little dopamine flowing in his brain before we had to start all over again.