Long before Jeremy Renner joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), he was already an established Hollywood actor with an Oscar nomination to boot. Today, fans of all ages may readily recognize him as Marvel’s Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye but unbeknownst to many, Renner could have easily starred in another superhero franchise.
In the end, however, Renner declined the opportunity and has since moved on. That said, the actor has also explained his decision to walk away from the project in recent years.
What Was Jeremy Renner Up To Prior To The MCU?
Even before signing up with Marvel, Renner’s career was already on overdrive. He made his Hollywood debut back in the 90s. Since then, Renner has scored several major roles in film, although that sometimes meant that he played the bad guy. For instance, he played officer Brian Gamble in the 2003 action film S.W.A.T. where he turns on his friends and nearly succeeds in helping a drug lord escape the U.S.
Just a few years later, he also starred alongside Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand in the drama North Country. Renner also followed this up with a role in the Oscar-nominated film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Soon after, Renner also joined the cast of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, the very same film that possibly led to Marvel’s discovery of Anthony Mackie. Renner also earned his first Oscar nomination for this movie.
Interestingly, it didn’t take long before this veteran actor scored another Oscar nod. This time, it was for his villainous role in Ben Affleck’s crime drama The Town. Renner is certainly capable of delivering one strong onscreen performance after another. Hollywood filmmakers took notice of him too, including Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro.
The Real Story Behind The Superhero Casting That Jeremy Renner Turned Down
More than a decade ago, del Toro decided to bring the comic character Hellboy to the big screen. And when he was putting together the film’s cast, del Toro had thought about bringing Renner in. Several reports that the director was eyeing the actor for the titular role. However, this was never the case. Instead, del Toro had considered Renner for the role of Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense agent John Myers.
In the first Hellboy movie, the agent works with Hellboy on the field after the taking the place of the liaison agent originally assigned to the titular character. Unfortunately, the prospect of starring alongside an unlikely superhero didn’t appeal to Renner. To make matters worse, the actor wasn’t even inspired to play Agent Myers. “I was just reading the script and [thinking] like, ‘I don’t get this…’ I just couldn’t connect to it,” Renner explained while speaking with fellow actor Justin Long for Long’s podcast Life is Short. The offer to play this part even reportedly came with “a lot of money” but in the end, Renner knew he shouldn’t do the film. “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.”
After Renner turned down the role, Rupert Evans eventually got cast. Following its release, Hellboy proved to be a massive success, raking in an estimated $99.4 million at the global box office, against a reported production budget of $66 million. At the same time, del Toro has also remarked that the 2004 film was “one [of] my top five I have directed.”
As for Renner, he never looked back after turning Hellboy down. And even if the movie ended up becoming a hit (and starting a franchise), the actor has made it clear that the decision to walk away from the film has never haunted him. “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,” the actor explained. “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.”
In contrast, it seems that Renner knew he was meant to play Hawkeye almost soon as he heard of the role (although rumors suggest he almost walked out of the MCU in the past). “When they showed me my character… it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s great, it’s just a guy with no superpower — he’s just got a high skill set,’” the actor explained. “I can actually attach to that. I’d have passed on [the role of] Thor all day long — not that I’d ever be cast in that — but like, that kind of thing I’d be like, ‘I don’t know how to do that, I’m sorry.’”
Today, Renner is yet to collaborate with del Toro on any project. That said, the actor is hard at work on his MCU projects (including the upcoming Disney Plus series Hawkeye), along with other films. For now, a collaboration between the two seems almost unlikely but that doesn’t mean it would never happen.
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