His kissing policy.
Whenever anybody does a ranking of “unwanted kisses” or “actors who didn’t want to kiss their costars”, Denzel always makes the list.
He earned that spot for his decision (back in the early 90s) to not kiss costar Julia Roberts, when they starred together in “The Pelican Brief”. Roberts had recommended Denzel for the role from the start and afterward said she would have been more than happy to kiss him. It was entirely his choice.
And why didn’t Denzel want to kiss Julia? Not because she was ugly… because she was white.
Now. Here’s where Denzel’s interesting policy comes into play.
No, Denzel is not a flaming racist who hates white people and would rather not kiss them if he can help it. Far from it. Only a few years prior, he’d kissed Mimi Rogers in “The Mighty Quinn”.
What concerned Denzel was not Roberts, but his audience. Specifically, his black female audience. After he had kissed Mimi Rogers in “The Mighty Quinn”, many black women had reached out to him, saying they felt like he’d “sold out” to the beauty ideals in Hollywood.
At the time, Hollywood still featured relatively few black women as love interests or objects of desire.
Denzel, out of respect for his fans, chose to save his on-screen kisses for a black woman to encourage Hollywood to diversify the relationships they portrayed the demographics they chose to present as beautiful.
And frankly, I’m sure his wife didn’t mind.
In terms of ageless beauty, they’re a good match.
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