As he leaves behind the shadows for a return to the limelight, actor Neal McDonough said that when Hollywood kicked him to the curb, it almost destroyed him.
In a January 2019 interview, McDonough said ABC booted him from “Scoundrels” because he would not kiss his co-star and perform sex scenes, according to USA Today.
“I won’t kiss any other woman because these lips are meant for one woman,” he said.
McDonough has been married to his wife, Ruve, since 2003.
“I’d always had in my contracts I wouldn’t kiss another woman on-screen,” he said, according to Hello.
“My wife didn’t have any problem with it. It was me, really, who had a problem with it.”
“When I couldn’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,” he said.
The result was disastrous, the 60-year-old actor who appears in the Jimmy Stewart bio pic “Jimmy,” said, according to Fox News.
“What time is the bar open? That was generally my thought process back then,” he said. “It was, you know, fired from a show because I wouldn’t kiss a woman.”
“No one would hire me because they thought I was this religious nut bag, which is that I love my wife so much. And no one can understand it, no one could understand it,” he said.
Admitting he “was always a drinker,” he said “it became a bad problem” to the point where “I lost the house, lost the cars, lost everything.”
Actor Luke Perry let McDonough and his family to live in his home once theirs was gone.
“‘Justified’ was just coming out, but I still didn’t think I was worth anything because I failed to my family,” he said, referring to the show that was his first step back into action.
“I failed Ruve, my five kids, that I lost our house. I lost all the beautiful things that were the shiny widgets that I had accumulated, were all taken away from me. And that crucifixion caused me so much inner pain because I made it all about me. How could I let the team down?” he said.
He said his wife one day had enough of his freefall.
“She grabbed me and says, it’s us or the bottle, you choose,” he said, adding he “never looked back.”
“It’s just a cold, hard fact that God gave me an amazing, incredible, most amazing woman that I’ve ever met,” he added.
“I can talk forever about it, but she’s my good luck charm, and she got through me hell, and now here I am, in a fantastic place in life that we’re producing movies together. And I can’t tell you how amazing that feels,” he said.
McDonough and his wife are now co-producers of projects such as “Boon,” “The Warrant: Breaker’s Law,” “Homestead,” and “The Last Rodeo.”
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