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

12. Helen Hunt - Jean Grey

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.