Over the course of his career, Jude Law has flexed his acting muscles in a variety of genres, and it turns out that he very nearly flexed the hell out of his actual muscles to play the Man of Steel. During his appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Law confided in his host that he came very close to considering a role in a pre-Zack Snyder version of Superman.
“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. This director was very keen to meet and impress it upon me and I was actually out in California and he said, ‘Look, you just have to try the suit on. The suit’s amazing, and we’ve revamped the suit,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, send the suit over.'”
Here’s Law’s amusing anecdote describing what happened when the costume arrived:
“So I take the suit into the bathroom and I’m putting it on and then I look round, I’m in the mirror and suddenly…I’m Superman, right. And the music kinda comes in like da, da, dada duh duh, right, I stood there and then I had this picture of 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.”
It’s uncertain whether Law is referring to the movie that actually hit screens in 2006 – Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns – or Brett Ratner’s Superman: Flyby, which was scripted by J.J. Abrams and never made it to production. Nevertheless, it’s fun to hear the English thespian discuss his approach to potential superstardom, and why he opted to say no to a life of spandexed celebrity.
