Skip to main content

Love & Passion Quote by Madeleine Stowe

"The Kiss scene was attempted three times. The first was in a peculiar spot of the fort on the ground level. It felt forced to me, and I knew right away that, in spite of what others were saying, it was dead wrong"

About this Quote

There is something bracing about an actor admitting that a romantic beat can be "dead wrong" even when the room is insisting otherwise. Madeleine Stowe isn’t selling glamour here; she’s narrating the unsexy mechanics of manufacturing chemistry, and the moment when craft turns into self-protection. The kiss isn’t just a kiss. It’s a decision about power, tone, and truth inside a scene - and Stowe frames that truth as bodily knowledge: "It felt forced to me". In a business that routinely rewards compliance, the line lands as a quiet refusal.

The detail about location does a lot of work. A "peculiar spot of the fort on the ground level" sounds like a director’s or crew’s clever choice - textured, cinematic, maybe symbolically loaded. Stowe punctures that by focusing on how it plays emotionally: the set’s romance is irrelevant if the scene doesn’t breathe. She’s describing the mismatch between a production’s external logic (blocking, angles, schedule) and an actor’s internal logic (motivation, rhythm, consent, credibility).

"Attempted three times" reads like persistence, but also like pressure. Repetition becomes a soft coercion: if you try it enough, the discomfort will become performance. Her subtext is about authority - who gets to declare a moment "right". Stowe’s confidence comes from recognizing the early warning signal, the instant when the story starts lying. That’s the real intimacy she’s protecting: not with a co-star, but with the audience’s trust.

Quote Details

TopicMovie
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Stowe, Madeleine. (2026, January 16). The Kiss scene was attempted three times. The first was in a peculiar spot of the fort on the ground level. It felt forced to me, and I knew right away that, in spite of what others were saying, it was dead wrong. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-kiss-scene-was-attempted-three-times-the-96455/

Chicago Style
Stowe, Madeleine. "The Kiss scene was attempted three times. The first was in a peculiar spot of the fort on the ground level. It felt forced to me, and I knew right away that, in spite of what others were saying, it was dead wrong." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-kiss-scene-was-attempted-three-times-the-96455/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The Kiss scene was attempted three times. The first was in a peculiar spot of the fort on the ground level. It felt forced to me, and I knew right away that, in spite of what others were saying, it was dead wrong." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-kiss-scene-was-attempted-three-times-the-96455/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Madeleine Add to List
The Kiss Scene That Felt Forced - Madeleine Stowe Insight
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

USA Flag

Madeleine Stowe (born August 18, 1958) is a Actress from USA.

29 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes