10 Actors Who Almost Played Spider-Man At One Point

Everyone wants to be Spider-Man. However, while the rest of us only got to pretend to shoot webs from our wrists as kids, three lucky fellas – namely Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland - have been paid to do the job on film. In the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, The Amazing Spider-Man movies and Captain America: Civil War (and beyond), each of these actors portrayed distinctive versions of the familiar character and each brought something, ahem, amazing to the role. But none of them were clear shoe-ins for the part to begin with. Each of the three separate iterations of the character were only cast after a great number of actors had been carefully whittled down until they found the right guy. That means there have been a lot of famous faces who almost ended up donning red and blue spandex. From James Franco to Charlie Sheen, check out the following list of 10 actors who you probably never knew almost played Spider-Man at some point in their career. 10) Josh Hutcherson Insert obligatory "Peeta Parker" joke here. Yup, The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson was previously in the running to play the webslinger. He was a hot favourite for the role back in 2010, in the run up to the first The Amazing Spider-Man. Just 17 at the time, he even put together a demo reel of himself in character. It’s a little over the top, sure, but he's a fairly good visual fit for the character. Given that the eventual choice, Andrew Garfield, was 27 when cast, Hutcherson was probably passed over due to his youth. Ironically, though he expressed interest when the role was vacated once again a few years later, the then-22 year old Hutcherson was probably too old, and the 19 year old Tom Holland was cast instead. 9) Edward Furlong Most known for playing the future saviour of mankind John Connor in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Edward Furlong could have been a hero in the short term too if he had been cast as Spider-Man. As Spider-fans may know, James Cameron tried to get a Spider-Man movie off the ground throughout the 1990s. In 1995, the film was ready to go with Furlong as Peter, Drew Barrymore as Gwen Stacy and possibly Katherine Hepburn as Aunt May. The villains would have been Lance Henriksen as the Green Goblin (who would have killed Gwen) and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Doctor Octopus (who probably would have made a load of octopus puns). Unfortunately, the production company Carolco went bankrupt and so Cameron moved on to do some little film called Titanic. Bad move there, pal. 8) Freddie Prinze Jr. At the tail end of the 1990s, Freddie Prinze Jr. seemed to be on the road to becoming the next big thing, after roles in hit movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer. Unfortunately, despite (or perhaps because of) playing Fred in the live-action Scooby Doo movies, big success didn’t come. It would have, though, if he had nabbed the role of Peter Parker in 2002’s Spider-Man. Apparently, he was top choice for the part by many in the know – sadly for him, Sam Raimi was not one of them. Speaking about the casting around the time of the film’s release on Howard Stern’s radio show, Prinze said: “Everyone kind of let me know that it was kind of my flick… everyone except the director.” 7) Heath Ledger He might be known for the most critically-lauded supervillain performance of all-time for his chilling rendition of the Joker in The Dark Knight, but Heath Ledger could have been cast as a superhero instead on two separate occasions. He almost played the lead role in Batman Begins before Christian Bale was cast and, earlier than that, he was the first choice to play a certain wallcrawler, too. According to the late actor’s agent Steve Alexander, it was Ledger who turned the part down. Alexander later revealed: "Sony asked me to come over and read the script for Spider-Man. It was going to be a really cool tentpole movie...But as soon as I said Spider-Man Heath said, 'It's not for me. I would be taking someone else's dream away." 6) James Franco Similar to how Ledger almost played Batman and instead went on to play the Joker, James Franco was one of Sam Raimi’s final choices to play Peter Parker, though he of course lost out to Tobey Maguire in the end. Raimi clearly liked the guy, though, and instead cast him in the movie as Harry Osborn (the pair later also worked together on 2013’s Oz: The Great and Powerful). While Franco has gone somewhat off the boil (and off his rocker) recently, he did actually give a pretty strong performance as Harry Osborn, so we think Raimi called it right on that one. The actor clearly works best when there is a bit of sleaze to his character, so him playing the complete good guy Peter Parker probably wouldn’t have worked out anyways. 5) Charlie Sheen We kid you not. Charlie Sheen was almost Spider-Man. Well, at least according to the man himself. Apparently, Sheen tried to get the movie rights for the character back in the 80s, and pitched the idea to Orion – the studio that later made Oscar winners Platoon and Silence of the Lambs. Here’s what he later explained: “I had an office at Orion at the time, and I brought them Spider-Man. I said, ‘Look, in a couple of years, I’ll be too old to play Peter Parker.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, we’re just thinking that cartoons are not the future, comic books are not the future.’ And I said, ‘But it’s Spider-man, I’m perfect.’ And they were like, ‘Nah, we’re gonna wait.’” Unfortunately for Sheen, there was no “winning” this role. 4) Michael Jackson The idea of Charlie Sheen as Spider-Man not crazy enough for you? Well, how about the fact that the prince of pop himself campaigned to play Peter Parker? According to Marvel supremo Stan Lee, he met with Michael Jackson in the 1990s when the star was interested in buying out Marvel. Jackson was apparently very keen to make a Spider-Man movie, with Stan believing that he also intended to star in the picture. He apparently met with Lee as he thought he could buy the rights from him, but Stan told him he had to go to the company - which precipitated Jackson’s attempt to take over Marvel. While things probably turned out for the best, it would have made for a good "thriller" seeing Jackson take on some "smooth criminals" as Spidey, don't you think? 3) Tom Cruise Marvel fans may know that Tom Cruise was for a long time the favourite to play Tony Stark in 2007’s Iron Man, before Robert Downey Jr. came along and superhero movie history was made. However, it is much less known that he could have been Spider-Man as well. Back in the 1980s, Cannon Films (most well known for making the super-cheap Superman IV: The Quest for Peace) had the rights to make Spider-Man. To be directed by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Tobe Hooper, at one point Cruise – then an upcoming actor – was attached to star. Bob Hoskins was Doctor Octopus, while classic Hollywood actress Lauren Bacall was Aunt May. Oh, and possibly Stan Lee himself was J. Jonah Jameson. Is it wrong that we sort of wish this one had got made? 2) Leonardo DiCaprio Though it’s not like he hasn’t done all right for himself anyways, Leonardo DiCaprio has had a couple of chances to land a big superhero movie role. He was offered the part of Robin in the original Batman films and around the same time was also asked to try out for Spider-Man. This was back when James Cameron (who later directed DiCaprio in Titanic) was attempting to direct a Spidey movie, now at Columbia Pictures after Carolco’s closure. Leo later recalled: “That was another one of those situations, similar to Robin, where I didn’t feel ready to put on that suit yet. They got in touch with me.” 1) Jake Gyllenhaal The actor who has come the closest to playing Spider-Man is surely Jake Gyllenhaal – though he almost got it in the strangest of scenarios. While he was in the running for 2002’s Spider-Man, Gyllenhaal lost out to Tobey Maguire. However, by 2004’s Spider-Man 2, Maguire had severely injured his back while filming Seabiscuit and it was feared he would not recover in time for shooting. In his place, Gyllenhaal was chosen to replace him (perhaps partly due to the fact he was dating Kirsten Dunst at the time). He even had a costume fitting, before Maguire’s back healed and the recasting didn’t come to pass. Shortly afterwards, he missed out on another role when he lost the part of Batman to Christian Bale. Some actors just aren’t destined to be superheroes I guess.