“I never got invited back”: when Charlie Cox’s accidental method acting cost him ‘Han Solo’
Within the history of comic book cinema, there have been few films more disastrous than the 2003 Daredevil origin film, which starred Ben Affleck as Matt Murdock.
While it was perhaps direct Mark Steven Johnson who is more to blame than Affleck and his co-star Jennifer Garner, who was cast as Elektra, Daredevil was such a slap-in-the-face to fans of the Marvel comic books by Stan Lee that it seemed impossible for ‘The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen’ to ever make a comeback on the big screen.
As it turned out, he was able to make a resurgence on the small screen when Marvel Studios began greenlighting a group of grittier, street-level shows to air directly on Netflix, as this was before Disney had its own streaming service.
The first of these shows was Daredevil, which cast the British actor Charlie Cox in the role of the titular anti-hero vigilante. While Cox had some acting credits of note previously, including a memorable guest role in Boardwalk Empire, he became synonymous with Daredevil by delivering an amazing performance.
Since the seasons of a Netflix show gave him so much room to grow into the role, Cox ended up logging as much time as Murdock as any of the other actors in the Marvel franchise, such as Chris Hemsworth as Thor or Chris Evans as Steve Rogers. One aspect of his performance that was specifically praised was his ability to convincingly look blind; while this is something that Affleck could sort of fake for a two-hour film, it was much harder for Cox to do over the course of three seasons.
Cox’s method acting was successful in making his performance more authentic, but it became more challenging when he tried to seek out other parts. He singled out a specific audition in which he realised that the role of Daredevil hadn’t entirely left him.
“I had gone to an audition, one of those things that are super secretive and they don’t tell you, but I’m pretty sure it was for the Han Solo reboot,” he told Hollywood Reporter, “Halfway through it, the casting director stopped me and said, ‘Why aren’t you looking at me?’ I realised 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 couldn’t figure out why I was acting like a complete idiot.”
While Cox may have lost out on playing a younger version of Harrison Ford when Alden Ehrenreich was cast in Solo: A Star Wars Story, his loyalty to the role of Daredevil ended up being to his benefit. Although all of the Netflix shows that Marvel had produced ended up getting cancelled, it was decided that they could stream on Disney+ ahead of a reboot.
Daredevil: Born Again is now in its second season on Disney+, and brings back the actor alongside many of the other stars of the original Netflix show, including Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, also known as ‘the Kingpin’. While the first season had some creative issues that resulted in the original showrunners being fired, Cox’s notes were listened to, prompting Marvel to rework the show so that it would be closer in tone to what had been set up on the first three seasons on Netflix.
