Chris Evans will always be remembered as the man who brought Captain America to life.
But what's the true story behind this Hollywood hero — and how did he make the journey from
teen movie parodies to the biggest franchise in movie history?
Although it's practically unthinkable today, there is some dark alternate reality out there
where Chris Evans decided to become a dentist — his father was one, after all.
Luckily, Evans' mother was a dancer who later became a youth theater director, and must
have been thrilled when her two sons decided that the world of theater was far more appealing
than the world of dentistry.
Evans told W Magazine:
"We were like the von Trapps [from The Sound of Music].
All singing and dancing.
I still sing everywhere — in the shower, in the car."
Evans' brother Scott, who is two years his junior, also went on to become an actor — though
he didn't become quite the star his brother did.
Scott spent two years on the soap opera One Life to Live, and has had a couple of bit
parts on some random television shows, including Grace and Frankie and HBO's Looking.
Of course, there's a decent chance there'll be a space opening up for the role of Captain
America sometime soon, too — and it's always good to keep it in the family.
Considering the whole Sound of Music thing his family had going on, it's probably no
huge surprise to find that Evans pretty much always wanted to be an actor.
In fact, he told Boston Magazine that, by his junior year of high school, he'd already
decided he was going to take his acting seriously.
So he talked his parents into letting him move to New York City for the summer.
In New York, he attended the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute and then got an
internship with a casting agency.
He returned to Lincoln-Sudbury High in Massachusetts to complete his senior year, but says he was
still traveling to New York for auditions around once a week.
Evans told Boston Magazine:
"At that point college was still part of the plan.
But then I got really lucky.
I got a pilot, and that got picked up and took me to L.A.
So we decided, 'Maybe college can wait.'"
In the fall semester, Evans "doubled up" on his remaining classes and graduated early
so he could move to Los Angeles and start work on the teen dramedy Opposite Sex, which
was canceled after eight episodes.
However, the show at least launched Evans' career and got him into Hollywood.
Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly downhill from there.
Evans' first big screen role was in Not Another Teen Movie, a 2001 parody of the teen movie
genre.
Evans told TheWrap in 2014:
"It wasn't exactly some high-brow art.
I was thrilled […] but my buddies were still giving me a lot of crap and calling me a terrible
actor."
And it's not like he segued from that film to Captain America or anything, either — there
were more bad movies to follow.
Evans told The Boston Globe:
"My first couple of movies were really terrible.
The Perfect Score, which was gone in a New York minute, and then I did a movie called
Cellular, which was gone, then Orphan King, which never even made it to theaters.
Your first movie, you think 'This is it!
Look out world!'
And then you're like, 'Oh… back to the drawing board, I guess."
Before the fame, before the fortune, before the biceps... there was the board game.
According to ComicBook.com, back in 1999, Evans appeared as "Tyler" in Hasbro's classic
Mystery Date. Evans can be seen in the top-left corner of the box cover in the weird blue
filter, chatting into the fake flip phone that was packaged with the game.
He has his own game card, too, which pictures him as Tyler wearing a blue and black rash
guard, and carrying an orange surfboard.
On the flip side, players get to read about Tyler's ideal date: "A walk around the cliffs,
then hang out by the bonfire with other friends."
And sure, it's easy to get judgemental about stuff like this, but be fair — everybody's
gotta start somewhere.
Even if you're a huge Marvel fan, there's a good chance you've tried to avoid the Fantastic
Four movies — because, well…
In fact, you may have paid them so little attention that you didn't even realize that
Captain America was also once the Human Torch.
Evans played Johnny Storm in 2005's Fantastic Four and in its 2007 sequel, Rise of the Silver
Surfer.
The second movie got slammed by critics particularly badly, so the planned third installment was
canceled.
On the bright side, a lot of critics had a lot of good to say about Evans' performance.
When comparing Evans' Human Torch to Michael B. Jordan's Human Torch in the 2015 reboot,
reviewer J.M. Wong wrote:
"The best thing I can say is that they were both the least worst thing in their respective
movies."
After Silver Surfer, Evans took a role in The Losers, a film based on the Vertigo comic
series.
He was also in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, as well as Snowpiercer, which was based on
a French graphic novel.
All in all, Evans has got some pretty serious comic book cred under his belt.
Although many actors would dream of taking even a minor role in the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, for Chris Evans, the decision to play Captain America wasn't an easy one to
make.
"You were initially reluctant to be Captain America.”
“Yeah, yeah.
I was scared.”
A multi-movie contract, he explained, is a big no-way-out commitment, and he wasn't sure
he wanted to take that on.
"When you have a giant contract all of the sudden, you weren’t responding well… too
bad, you gotta suit up.
That was scary."
According to MTV, Evans was competing against actors like Channing Tatum and John Krasinski
for the role but evidently didn't know it — since Captain America director Joe Johnston
said they offered the part to Evans without even asking him to audition.
In fact they offered it to him "a few times," until he finally said "yes."
Evans told Jimmy Kimmel he accepted the role after he realized fear was the only thing
holding him back.
“It ended up just clicking to me and the way of looking at this, whatever you’re
scared of, push yourself into it."
And that's how Chris Evans became Captain America.
As Captain America and Black Widow, Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson play two of the
MCU's original heroes, but their relationship predates those roles by a number of years.
According to ScreenRant, they've known each other since 2004, when they both starred in
the teen heist comedy The Perfect Score.
Their professional careers crossed paths again in 2007, when they worked together on a film
called The Nanny Diaries.
In fact, the two are such close friends that Johansson once told Access Hollywood that
kissing Chris Evans on screen was a total non-issue.
"At this point we’re old and jaded.
It’s like, ‘Bring him on.’
You know, no big deal.
Pop in the Tic Tacs, get the cameras rolling."
Both actors have, at various times, even been known to describe each other as siblings.
"Like the big, sort of younger… a little bit annoying, but always charming brother."
Some fans have even been rooting for a Cap and Black Widow romance, but sadly there's
not much chance of that happening anytime soon.
Looks like, just as in real life, the two will have to stay as friends.
Obviously, Chris Evans is a huge comic book fan — and spent hours immersed in them as
a kid, right?
After all, why would he be in a million different comic book movies if he didn't have some kind
of heartfelt love for the genre?
Strangely enough, however, Evans wasn't really into comic books when he was growing up.
"I didn't grow up comic books.
I knew of Captain America, but I never grew up doing the comic book thing."
Still, he's at least warmed up to the superhero thing over the years.
When he was asked to remark on the character of Captain America for the book Marvel Studios:
The First Ten Years, he said:
"Steve Rogers is a man who wants very much to do good and serve his country […] [He's]
the true moral compass and heart behind the franchise."
Which, in fairness, sounds like just the kind of thing Cap himself might say.
In between making Marvel movies and making a whole bunch of other Marvel movies, Chris
Evans directed and starred in a non-superhero film called Before We Go, about a chance meeting
between an unhappy New York street musician and a woman who becomes stranded in Grand
Central Station after she misses her train.
According to Variety, Before We Go cost $3 million and took 19 days to film.
It grossed $37,151, which Hollywood Reporter says is about 0.01 percent of what Infinity
War grossed on opening weekend.
The film got an abysmal 24 percent on Rotten Tomatoes too, so it wasn't exactly well-received
— although the Hollywood Reporter did give it high praise by calling it "not embarrassing."
That doesn't exactly mean that Evans is a terrible director, though, and he certainly
doesn't seem deterred.
He told the Hollywood Reporter:
"I'm okay with making mistakes.
And I learned a lot from that one."
It's hard to imagine that an actor might be secretly dealing with anxiety.
After all, someone who can perform in front of a large crowd — be it an audience or
a film crew — surely couldn't experience anxiety as we know it, could they?
Sadly, it's very much a reality for many actors, including Chris Evans.
According to Vulture, Evans suffers from some pretty severe anxiety — so severe, in fact,
that he had to see a therapist to help him cope with the pressures of signing on to play
Captain America.
His anxiety has occasionally even manifested in public situations — in an interview with
the New York Times, he said he once had an anxiety attack while on a European junket
for Fantastic Four.
He told the newspaper:
"No one's even speaking to me, and in a matter of 60 seconds I went from being fine to full
meltdown, just stood up and walked offstage."
The acting itself, though, doesn't provoke his anxiety in the same way interviews and
public appearances do.
Evans told the New York Times:
"[Acting is] a very safe place to play, have fun, and not feel judged or scrutinized."
Rumors about Chris Evans' "retirement" have been floating around ever since a 2014 interview
with Variety, in which he seemed to imply that he was planning to give up acting.
He told the magazine:
"If I'm acting at all, it's going to be under Marvel contract, or I'm going to be directing.
I can't see myself pursuing acting strictly outside of what I'm contractually obligated
to do."
While those do sound like the words of someone who might be getting bored with his "contractual
obligations," all he was really saying was that he'd like to also do some directing every
now and again.
Today, Evans actually tends to get pretty annoyed when people ask him if he's planning
to retire after Endgame.
During a sit-down interview with THR shortly after the Variety interview, he clarified:
"I never said the word 'retire.'
It's a really obnoxious notion for an actor to say they're going to retire.
It's not something you retire from."
In fact, all he's really said since is that he's not going to play Captain America anymore
— and there's plenty of evidence that he'll still be acting.
After Endgame he'll be starring in Knives Out, a murder mystery from Last Jedi director
Rian Johnson, as well as an adaptation of William Landay's Defending Jacob.
He's also negotiating for a starring role in the Antoine Fuqua movie Infinite.
Lucky for all of us, the end of Captain America doesn't seem like it's going to be the end
of Chris Evans — not by a long shot.
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