ALAMY
It’s one of cinema’s most iconic kisses, but the making of Spider-man’s snog was far from romantic. Spidey (Tobey Maguire) and M.J. (Kirsten Dunst) lock lips during a deluge, him hanging from a fire escape above, her with feet planted firmly on the floor. As the heavens open, M.J. peels back the mask of the mystery man she doesn’t realise is her school friend Peter Parker and exposes his mouth in order to seal their affection.
The press of her lips to his may have inflamed audiences watching Sam Raimi’s 2002 hit Spider-Man but for Maguire it was akin to ‘practically suffocating’. Harnessed upside down with the blood rushing to his head, his passionate scene was further complicated by overhead sprinklers sending driving rain down onto the sound stage and both actors. ‘There was rain pouring down my nose,’ he recalled of the scene, ‘and then Kirsten pulls the mask up… and it’s blocking the air passage there, so I couldn’t breathe. And then she’s kissing me, blocking the air passage there, so there’s nowhere else to breathe. It was really tough, actually. They’d yell cut, and I would be [gasping for air], totally out of breath. It was torture. It makes you realise how important oxygen is.’ Maguire endured by ‘sneaking little breaths’ out of the corner of his mouth during takes.