Jeremy Renner has revealed that he turned down the role of Hellboy in Guillermo del Toro’s 2004 film.
These days, audiences know Jeremy Renner as one of the stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, thanks to his integral roles in the likes of Avengers: Endgame as Hawkeye.
Renner, however, nearly played a very different type of hero before Marvel came along, revealing to the Life is Short podcast (via EW) that he turned down the part of Hellboy in the 2004 film by Guillermo del Toro:
“I was just reading the script and [thinking] like, ‘I don’t get this…’ I just couldn’t connect to it. I said, ‘I can’t find a way in [to this character], I don’t know what I’d be doing,’ so I had to say no. There’s zero regrets, zero. Most of the time it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m glad I didn’t do it,’ and it made sense to me. Not just Hellboy or whatever it was, and I’m not saying that it’s a good or bad movie, it’s not about that… I just wouldn’t have fit there.”
SEE ALSO: David Harbour doesn’t expect to play Hellboy again
The role of Hellboy would ultimately go to Ron Perlman who truly made it his own in the 2004 movie and its 2008 sequel, before the series was rebooted earlier this year with David Harbour as the lead.
Would you have been interested in seeing Jeremy Renner’s take on Hellboy? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us @FlickeringMyth…
Originally published July 4, 2019. Updated August 10, 2019.
