“I got very close”: the iconic 2009 role Sebastian Stan “really, desperately wanted” to play
Landing a superhero movie must be like winning the lottery for an actor, so you can only imagine what it’s like to be able to book not just a Marvel film, but a DC Comics one too. While the likes of Ben Affleck and Ryan Reynolds have crossed from one universe to another in the past, the latest to do so is Sebastian Stan.
That’s because the former Winter Soldier has confirmed he will be taking on the role of Harvey Dent/Two-Face in next year’s blockbuster sequel, The Batman: Part Two, opposite Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader. It will mean that, while not quite being a household name, more of a just outside the house name, he will have held two of the most recognisable characters in the comic book world over the past decade.
Stan has certainly put a shift in to get to this point however. While he made a bit part appearance in a film all the way back in 1994 as a child actor, it was 2003 when he had his proper debut in Law and Order, and for the next five years or so he toiled away on TV shows and small budget movies until he got a decent part in Gossip Girl, the Blake Lively network show that proved a big hit in the late 2000s.
But movie success still eluded him, and he was disappointed to miss out on a genuine blockbuster in 2009 as he told the Happy Sad Confused podcast, “There were a couple of things I didn’t get that I really, desperately wanted. Captain Kirk for JJ Abrams was one of the first things that I got very close to. I had a screen test where I would try and replicate all of these William Shatner pictures just to send to [JJ] to see how much I look like him and stuff. Didn’t get it.”
Had Stan managed to win the part of Kirk, he would have found himself aboard the USS Enterprise on Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, a film that proved massively popular and had Chris Pine as Kirk alongside Simon Pegg and Zoe Saldaña.
While it was an expensive film to make at $150million, it brought in $350m at the box office and is notable for featuring a very early appearance from Chris Hemsworth, who you can spot in the opening scene. Missing out on the movie proved to be a tough one for Stan, who, meanwhile, took a part in the admittedly successful comedy Hot Tub Time Machine.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long for Marvel to come calling, with his first appearance as ‘Bucky’ Barnes being in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, a role he reprised in 2014’s The Winter Soldier and 2016’s Civil War, both of which were enormous hits for the MCU, and he also appeared in what was then assumed to be the final two Avengers movies, Infinity War and Endgame in 2019.
A couple of years later, Stan then teamed up with Anthony Mackie for the well-received Disney+ spin-off The Captain and the Winter Soldier, a six-part miniseries, and he is far from done with Barnes, despite signing on for DC Comics.
He’ll be partaking in the absolutely gargantuan mash-up that is Avengers: Doomsday at the end of this year, which promises to be the most expensive film ever made and should set things up nicely for an even bigger one in 2027 with Avengers: Secret Wars.
