Jeremy Renner Says He Turned Down Lead Role in Original Hellboy

As weird as it seems, Ron Perlman was nearly not the star of the original Hellboy films. That could have been Jeremy Renner, though he turned it down. Renner appeared on Justin Long’s Life is Short podcast and discussed his acting career, during which he said he turned down the lead role in the 2004 Guillermo Del Toro film.

Renner noted that this was before he became a star and that it was for “a lot of money,” but he couldn’t get into the role. He added (per JoBlo), “It never crossed my brain that, ‘Oh it’d be great to have that money.’ I still had to say no, because I didn’t know a way into the character. 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.”

The role, of course, then went to Perlman who played Hellboy in two films. Renner said he has no regrets about turning it down, saying, “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.”

He added than in regard to Hawkeye in the MCU, he knew how to crack the role right away, saying, “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.’ I can actually attach to that. I would 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.’ But Hawkeye, I’m like, ‘great, I can do that.'”