Actress and filmmaker Candace Cameron Bure reveals in a new interview she once stopped doing her signature end-of-movie kissing scenes out of respect for her husband's discomfort until conversation and prayer led them to an agreement for her to continue. Bure is a well-known face in Great American Family romantic comedies, which nearly always end with the lead actor and actress exchanging a brief kiss. Prior to her career at Great American Family, Bure starred in Hallmark movies. Bure made the comments in a new episode of the Candace Cameron Bure Podcast, noting that her brother, Kirk Cameron, addressed the issue in the movie Fireproof by having his wife deliver a stand-in kiss in that movie. The scene was filmed against a silhouette. ChurchLeaders first reported on her comments.
"So I always get asked, 'Well, why don't you do that, Candace, for every movie that you're in, why isn't Val stepping in?'" she said of her husband.
"In all of the TV movies that I do, there's always one kiss at the end. We all look forward to the kiss at the end. We all know it's going to happen," she added, laughing. "It doesn't happen till act nine in the movie. And my grandma, who watched every single movie of mine and all the other ones, would just wait for that soft kiss.
"So I just want to address that," she said. "And it's something that Val and I wrestled with along in our marriage."
Her husband, Valeri Bure, is a former National Hockey League player. They married in 1996.
"Val's like, 'I don't even really like watching you -- regardless of that kiss at the end -- I really don't like watching you be close to someone else.' And I get that. So we've had those struggles and a lot of conversation and prayer."
At one point in their marriage, she said, she stopped taking lead roles in rom-coms out of respect for her husband.
"I would never want to put my husband in that position. And we prayed about it and wrestled with it, and ultimately decided, 'Okay, God,' like, 'I'll let this go.'
"It was hard," she added.
Her husband, though, had a change of heart when he saw her turning down roles, she said.
"Movie [opportunities] came up, and [he] was like, 'Oh, great, you're doing another movie.' Because Val has always been supportive of those things, and yet I said, 'Yeah, but I'm not going to do it because there's a kiss at the end, and I know that makes you unhappy, and I don't want to dishonor our marriage.' And then I think the reality of that took a spin and a turn for Val in his heart.
"This is like years of talking this through," she said. "But then it came to a point where he said, 'I can handle it, and I don't want you to give up your entire career.'"
Bure noted that she had been in the entertainment industry prior to their marriage.
Eventually, they mutually agreed to set a boundary, ensuring the scenes remained nothing more than a kiss.
"And he said, 'I don't want to be the reason that you don't pursue the talents that God's given you and give up your career' …He was like, 'But I don't want to watch the movies. And if you're okay with me not watching, I want to support you, I want to be there for you, but I just don't want to watch them.' And I'm like, 'I can do that. I can do that.'"
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Photo Credit: ©YouTube/Candace Cameron Bure
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.