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‘Religious nut bag’: Actor says Hollywood blacklisted him for beliefs, fired him for refusing to kiss co-star

May 27, 2026 | | Print Article

Actor Neal McDonough has revealed that he was blackballed from Hollywood for many years because people assumed he was a “religious nut bag.”

McDonough, an open Republican, revealed this during a Fox News interview while talking about how he was once written out of a TV series because of his refusal to perform sex scenes and kiss his female co-star.

“I was, you know, fired from a show because I wouldn’t kiss a woman,” he said. “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 added that while he “was always a drinker,” it became a “bad problem” after he was blacklisted — a really, really “bad problem.”

“I lost the house, lost the cars, lost everything,” he revealed.

It was during this time that the late Luke Perry, a star of the hit 90s show “90210,” took him in.

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“‘Justified’ [a show he starred in] was just coming out, but I still didn’t think I was worth anything because I failed my family,” he said. “I failed [my wife] Ruve, my five kids, 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 added.

Through introspection, in addition to tough love from his wife, McDonough eventually realized that he had to make his life about serving God “rather than serving me.”

Indeed, it was his wife of 25 years, Ruve, who he credits with finally getting him to quit drinking.

“She grabbed me and says, ’It’s us or the bottle, you choose,'” he said. “I 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.”

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“I can talk forever about it, but she’s my good luck charm, and she got me through 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 added.

McDonough and his wife have reportedly worked together producing films and shows, including “Boon,” “The Warrant: Breaker’s Law,” “Homestead,” and “The Last Rodeo.”

“They first met in 2000 while filming ‘Band of Brothers’ and began dating in 2001,” according to Fox News. “They tied the knot in December 2003 and have since welcomed five children.”

His latest work was in “Jimmy,” a Jimmy Stewart biopic that drops on Nov. 6 and that McDonough stars in.

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“Now, after producing the Jimmy story and playing Jimmy Stewart’s dad and immersing myself in the world of Jimmy…to know what Jimmy Stewart had gone through just previously in World War II, and had already won the Academy Award for Mr. Smith, to come back after World War II and think, well, what am I going to do now in life?” he told Fox News.

He added that after he got to know that Stewart was a “very conflicted guy who just tried to get up every day and do the right thing,” the actor’s birthday “means a whole lot more to” him this year than in the past.

“Because Ruve and I got to see who Jimmy Stewart was, read all about Jimmy, what he had gone through, and then to watch it be personified in the amazing performance by KJ Apa — I am one lucky and blessed dude to be part of it,” he said.

Vivek Saxena
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