Star Wars: Did Daredevil Kill Charlie Cox's Chance Of Playing Han Solo?
Would he really have been a good fit anyway?
Sometimes you hear stories of casting near misses that leave you cursing the twist of fate that robbed us of alternate possibilities. It's hard to say that Charlie Cox playing Han Solo in the forthcoming stand-alone spin-off really qualifies in the same breath, but his profile is growing and he's proved in Daredevil that he's capable of great leading man performances.
Unfortunately for Cox, he apparently took the lessons he learned playing Daredevil a little too much to heart during his audition to play Solo.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter Cox's familiarity playing Matt Murdock helped botch his audition - a case of his being too good at an entirely different role to get the one he was applying for. Apparently, once you've played blind, it's hard to go back:
I had gone to an auditionone of those things that are super secretive and they dont tell you, but Im pretty sure it was for the Han Solo rebootand halfway through it, the casting director stopped me and said, Why arent you looking at me? I realized I had gotten into a habit of not making eye contact, because the only thing I had done for two years is play someone who is blind. I never got invited back, probably because they couldnt figure out why I was acting like a complete idiot.
So, it seems that ever since he's played Daredevil, he's gone to auditions and purposefully not made eye contact, which a series of casting directors now probably assume is some weird quirk of his performance ritual.
Would he have been any good as Solo? Well, personally I didn't think he was a very clear fit for Daredevil in the first place (given his past roles and his seemingly softer image) but he proved that entirely inaccurate. He perhaps doesn't have the swagger of Harrison Ford's early days as the character (though who says cocky Solo came fully formed?), but he does have undeniable acting chops and he would have been an intriguing possibility.
For now, we'll have to accept that Alden Ehrenreich is the man tasked with playing Solo, while Cox goes back to acting school to learn how to use his eyes properly.