12 Actors You Won't Believe Almost Played Iconic Comic Book Characters

Superhero roles can be the defining moments in an actor’s career; Robert Downey Jnr will never not be Iron Man now. He could keep working until he was 100 and people would still know him best as Tony Stark.

It can be a golden opportunity when it goes well, but of course this isn’t always the case. Jessica Alba’s career was actively harmed by the poor job she did under Tim Story’s terrible direction in Fantastic Four; she was once told not to cry during an emotional scene as it made her look less pretty.

For the most part though, it’s a pretty sweet gig.

Great work if you can get it, but sometimes for one reason or another, actors have the opportunity in the palm of their hands and it just slips away.

Sometimes the size of the contract or the script itself will put actors off, other times they might be the first pick until someone else wows at an audition. Logistics play a part too, with scheduling conflicts and a change of director both often leading to drastic changes to casting.

These 12 stars were once in the running for iconic comic book roles, but unfortunately missed out.

Jean Grey is one of the most iconic characters in all of comic book history, though you wouldn’t know that if you were only paying attention to the movies.

The Phoenix Saga has been fumbled twice now during the FoX-Men continuity, with both Famke Jansen and Sophie Turner’s take on the character wide of the mark. Jansen’s was the older, more mature Jean Grey better suited to the Phoenix storyline, but without much of her free spirit or much development.

Turner’s character meanwhile did have more of Grey’s youthful energy in Apocalypse, though it was strangely robbed from her in Dark Phoenix, and despite more development of her change into the Phoenix, things still didn’t really work.

Before either of those though, Helen Hunt was set to try her hand. Hunt was actually cast in the role Jansen eventually played in 2000, though when she dropped out the script was rewritten.

Could Hunt have given us a more rounded version of the character, a Jean Grey comic book fans might actually have liked? Possibly, but it depends on how the script would’ve gone. It would be grossly unfair to judge either Jansen or Turner purely on their portrayal of Grey, after all.