Jude Law is no stranger to playing iconic characters and/or appearing in legendary franchises. From portraying Albus Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts to joining the MCU in Captain Marvel, Law has done it all. And he’s added another to his resume with his turn as Captain Hook in Disney’s latest live-action reimagining, Peter Pan & Wendy. The twice Oscar-nominated actor doesn’t shy away from many challenges, then, and yet the prospect of playing Superman once proved too much for him to handle.
Back in 2016, Law admitted during an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that the role of the Man of Steel was his for the taking when he was first choice to play the lead in 2004’s ultimately unmade Superman: Flyby (to be directed by Brett Ratner from a script by J.J. Abrams). The two big problems Law had with becoming Kal-El were apparently the hero’s costume and his own accent.
“It didn’t float my boat, you know, like I just really didn’t want to go there,” Law explained to Colbert, about why he couldn’t bring himself to accent the gig. “First of all, I’m an Englishman and I felt like, I don’t know, it just didn’t seem to fit, and I was always worried about the outfit and I just didn’t fancy it.”
To demonstrate just how close he came to being Superman, Law recalled how he actually got to try on the red and blue suit, during a top-secret handover in a hotel room. “So there’s a knock on my hotel room, there’s a guard, a big guard, right, and this lady from the wardrobe and they bring the suit in, and I’m like ‘I’m not going to try the suit on in front of you,'” he joked.
After dashing into the bathroom to get some much-needed privacy, Law was struck by the life-changing nature of what being Superman meant:
“I’m putting it on and then I look round, I’m in the mirror and suddenly…I’m Superman. And the music kinda comes in like da, da, dada duh duh, right, I stood there and then I had this picture of that, me in that costume, on posters all over the world and I was like ‘no way’ and I unzipped it. But I was Superman for two minutes, that’s enough.”
While Law’s fears about a British Superman were clearly unfounded, as fans had no problems warming up to fellow Englishman Henry Cavill, it’s obvious that such a career-defining role wasn’t for him. Although at least he can still tell the grandkids one day that he got to embody Supes for all of two minutes.
Peter Pan & Wendy releases April 28 on Disney Plus.