10 Riskiest Superhero Movie Castings Which Paid Off

Alfred Molina is one of Britain's finest character actors, who before donning the tentacles of Doc Ock was best known for supporting roles in biopics such as Frida or working with up-and-coming auteurs like Paul Thomas Anderson on Boogie Nights and Magnolia.

To say Molina was not an obvious choice to play the American scientist who transforms from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde in a failed experiment was an understatement.

Part of director Sam Raimi's genius was recognising that the classically trained actor could bring a level of humanity that other Hollywood A-Listers would not have been able to delve into. After the success of the first Spider-Man film, the pressure to cast a big name as Dr. Otto Octavius must have been immense, but Raimi instead chose to cast another character actor as the villain, similar to Willem Dafoe but even less well known.

Spider-Man 2's success with audiences and critics was due to casting a worthy opponent to Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man and allowing us to sympathise with him and fear him in equal measure.