Neal McDonough “ Lost Everything ” after a Kiss contract

Character actor Neal McDonough appears a lot on the screen, with more than 20 roles through cinema and television in the 2020s only. But these parts were not always rolling. According to McDonough, at some point in his career, he ceased to receive jobs due to a romantic clause in his contract as an actor.
“I always had in my contracts that I do not kiss another woman on the screen,” said McDonough on the “Nothing unadomed” podcast by Tim Green. “My wife didn’t really have a problem with that. I really had a problem. I said to myself:” Yeah, I don’t want to put you through. I know we’re going to start having children and I don’t want to get my children to pass. “”
Since 2003, McDonough has been married to Ruvé Robertson, a South African model he met during the shooting of “Band of Brothers”. The couple have five children together.
Although McDonough has been acting for more than a decade beforehand, the mini-series of war acclaimed “Band of Brothers” is known as one of its most important first roles. A year later, he would appear in the “minority report” of Steven Spielberg. Since then, McDonough has continued to have a fairly coherent career as a character actor through cinema and television.
But McDonough says that this was not always the case. Although he did not say exactly when he declared that the decision to put a non-cupage rule in his contracts had affected his employability at a time in his career.
“Hollywood completely turned against me, and they would no longer be part of the show,” said McDonough. “For two years, I couldn’t find a job, and I lost everything you might imagine – not just the houses and material things, but your fanfaron, your cool, which you are, your identity, everything. My identity was an actor and a very good. ”
McDonough said he had used the situation to pivot to be a “bad day”, playing a certain number of wicked roles on large and small screens. The actor played a central role in the DC TV universe of CW, depicting the villain Damien Darhk in shows like “Arrow” and “Legends of Tomorrow”. He wanted to become “the best villain on the planet”.
“I think I realized it, to a certain extent,” said McDonough.
In 2025, McDonough helped write and played in “The Last Rodeo” for Angel Studios. Last year, he played in “Homestead” for the studio. He was added as a regular in the series for the second season of “Tulsa King” opposite Sylvester Stallone. However, the actor said that the alleged black list had put him mentally in a bad place.
“Once you don’t have this identity, you are somehow lost in a flesh,” said McDonough. “I was in a big and ugly-tailpin for a few years, and it took me a few years later to break the habit of” am I really in the show, or is it just a kind of part-time thing? “”