The sudden and tragic loss of immediate family. Struggles with substance abuse and
mental health. And did you know a cast member from one iconic superhero film
died while filming? Keep watching to learn all the tragic details about the MCU cast.
When Disney planned for a
spring 2022 sequel to their most successful standalone Marvel film, Black Panther,
this came with the belief that the full cast of the original would be returning. These plans came
to a tragic halt with the death of the film's star, Chadwick Boseman. As NBC News reports,
the 43-year-old actor had kept his battle with colon cancer a secret from the public for years.
According to Biography, after being diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016,
Boseman continued his acting career, starring or co-starring in more films.
Among these films were all four MCU movies that featured him as the king of Wakanda, T'Challa,
the Black Panther. He also gave award-winning performances in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
and Da 5 Bloods, which became the final two films of his life he'd appear in.
However, it is the role of T'Challa that will be the actor's legacy. Not only was it the most
financially successful MCU film for an individual hero, but as The New York Times editorialized, the
film was also a transcendent moment for African Americans and Black cinema in the 21st century.
Boseman's fans paid tribute to the fallen actor by posing with their arms forming an "X" across
their chest, which was popularized by Boseman in the film. Fans also honored Boseman's memory by
tweeting with the hashtag "Wakanda Forever." Deadline reports that the Marvel Studios
President Kevin Feige told investors there would be no recast for T'Challa for future MCU films.
Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Tony
Stark created the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The 2008 Iron Man film was the first in the MCU,
and its post-credits scene teasing future installments and the Avengers both excited fans
and led to the tradition of post-credits scenes in Marvel films. For Downey Jr., the role was an
incredible comeback after his own personal demons nearly destroyed his acting career.
According to Biography, after an uneventful tenure on Saturday Night Live in the 1980s,
Downey Jr. took off as a critically acclaimed actor. Although the early and mid-1990s were
a fruitful time for him, he was also abusing cocaine, alcohol, and heroin.
Casa Recovery reports that 1996 was a turning point for the actor.
He was arrested twice that year, once after being pulled over for speeding, only for the
officer to find Downey Jr. with a plethora of illegal drugs and an unloaded .357 magnum. The
next arrest came when his neighbors found him passed out in their son's bed. Despite this,
the actor refused to complete his required rehab and was ultimately sentenced to a year in jail.
By the turn of the century, the actor was still struggling with addiction
and could not find steady work. The Canyon Malibu reports that by 2003, Downey Jr. began to take his
addiction seriously, eventually getting clean. In sobriety, he re-entered Hollywood as a new person.
"A genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist."
As the daughter of Thanos and
arguably the strongest character on the Guardians of the Galaxy team,
Zoe Saldana has flexed her muscles in many scenes. Unfortunately,
these same muscles have added pain to her everyday life, according to Hello Magazine.
Saldana suffers from Hashimoto's thyroiditis, a disorder that causes her immune system
to turn against her own body, leading to symptoms such as muscle pain and fatigue.
While describing how the disorder makes her feel, Saldana explained,
"Your body doesn't have the energy it needs to filter toxins,
causing it to believe that it has an infection, so it's always inflamed."
According to WebMD, the actress knew from a young age that she could develop Hashimoto's
thyroiditis during her life. Her mother and two sisters also suffer from the disorder,
and Saldana herself began to show the early signs at 17 years old.
The actress recalled that the disease was particularly taxing on her mother, who,
throughout Saldana's childhood, often dealt with complications caused by the diagnosis.
Hashimoto's often leads to hypothyroidism, a disorder with symptoms including fatigue,
weight gain, and memory problems. As a result,
Saldana altered her eating habits and does not consume dairy or gluten.
Tom Holland cannot catch a break.
Whether he's being interrupted by co-stars to prevent him from spoiling important
movie details, or he's being "snapped" out of existence by Thanos, Tom Holland is the
Hollywood equivalent to a freshman being picked on by his high school football team.
It also doesn't help that he has suffered multiple injuries while filming movies.
In an interview with E! News, Holland admitted that toward the end of filming Spider-Man:
Homecoming, he injured his ACL after falling down the stairs.
"You know when you like, sort of, like, guhguhguhguh down the stairs?
I did that and tweaked my neg — my leg — and uh, it's now only just on the mend."
Despite the injury, he was still able to film the last shots of the movie in New York.
More recently, Holland suffered another two injuries over the course of just a few months.
According to Cinema Blend, Holland almost broke his nose while filming 2021's Cherry.
Then, while he was preparing to film Spider-Man: No Way Home,
Den of Geek reports that Holland suffered another knee injury that kept him off the shooting lot
for a few days. Like his other injuries, this one didn't look to be too serious.
Hopefully, Holland will be able to keep his career's momentum going without retaining any
more physical harm… but he might want to watch out for banana peels on his way to auditions.
As Shuri, the younger sister of T'Challa and
technological genius of Wakanda, Letitia Wright brought a humorous sarcasm to the
role and made the character a fan favorite. Her performance garnered critical praise and awards,
including a Rising Star award at the 2019 BAFTAs. According to Insider,
Wright used her acceptance speech to reveal the personal struggles she'd faced with depression
and how she had been ready to give up on acting.
Wright credits much of her professional success and her success in the right
with depression to her faith, family, and the British Academy
of Film and Television Arts. She stated during her acceptance speech,
"The only thing that pretty much pulled me out of that was God,
my belief, my faith, my family, and an email from BAFTA saying that they wanted
me to be a part of the BAFTA Breakthrough Brits, and I was like 'let me try again.'"
During her press tour for Black Panther, Wright used her platform and her own
personal experience to help increase awareness regarding mental health in the Black community.
Rotten Tomatoes reports that, since the role of T'Challa will not be recast,
future installments of the Black Panther franchise will focus more on Wright's character Shuri.
Pom Klementieff's character Mantis brings humor
and surprisingly important powers to the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, seeing that she has been
able to slow down both Thanos and Ego the Living Planet. Mantis was introduced as an orphan who
served Ego. Sadly, like her character, Klementieff has suffered many losses during her life.
According to Answers Africa, the actress was born to a French-Russian father
and a Korean mother. Because of her father's job as a consul with the French government,
the family moved around the world before settling in France. When she was just five, Pom's father
died of cancer. She says she has very few memories of him. Soon after this tragedy, Pom and her
older brother had to move in with her uncle and aunt, as her mother suffered from schizophrenia.
Tragedy continued to follow Klementieff. Her uncle died on her 18th birthday.
According to The Famous People, Klementieff then began law school in order to make her aunt happy,
but soon chose to pursue acting at the Cours Florent drama school in Paris instead.
On Pom's 25th birthday, her brother committed suicide. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer,
she credits acting for helping her deal with all of these losses, saying
"It's cathartic in a way. [...] You relive it and become accepting of
it and you touch other people's hearts with your experience and performance."
Mark Ruffalo's journey in the MCU began at the
front of the line, making his first appearance as Dr. Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk, in The Avengers,
having taken over the role from Edward Norton. Still, Ruffalo's portrayal of the doctor trying
to control his emotions before embracing the powerful green monster became as celebrated as
any performance by the ensemble cast. His life off the stage hasn't been as easy, however.
According to the Huffington Post, the actor lost his younger brother,
Scott Ruffalo to a mysterious murder in 2008. According to Reuters,
the case originally had two persons of interest, who turned themselves in for questioning. The two
men claimed the death was not a murder, but the result of a game of Russian Roulette gone wrong.
A lawyer for one of the suspects claimed that Scott Ruffalo had been a known cocaine user,
and that he had often toyed with firearms in the past. This information lead
the Beverly Hills Police Department to proclaim Scott's death a suicide.
However, physical evidence indicated suicide was impossible, and his death was re-labeled
as a homicide. To this day, Ruffalo lives with the mystery left behind by the tragedy.
"How do you make peace with a mystery like that?"
"How do you make peace with every mystery? You, you just live alongside it."
Although he's appeared in only two MCU
films so far, Chiwetel Ejiofor's character looks to be a villainous
mainstay in future installments of the Doctor Strange franchise. According to The Famous People,
Ejiofor's acting career has already won him a BAFTA and other acolytes for great performances.
Chiwetel's father, Arinze Ejiofor, was a musician and doctor, according to Answers
Africa. Originally from Nigeria, his mother, Obiajulu, was forced from her
home when she was a teenager because of the Biafran War that ravaged her home country.
Her family relocated to the United Kingdom, where she married Arinze.
In 1988, while back in Nigeria for a wedding, Chiwetel and Arinze were
involved in a serious car crash. The accident left the soon-to-be actor in the hospital for
months and killed Arinze. A pregnant Obiajulu returned to Nigeria to be with her son,
and the accident left the young man with permanent scars on his forehead. Following Arinze's death,
Chiwetel and his mother grew closer, and soon, he became enthralled with acting.
At the age of 13, Chiwetel began performing onstage in plays at Dulwich College.
During his teen years, he performed in Othello, Romeo and Juliet,
and Blue/Orange before transitioning to film. His film debut was in Steven Spielberg's Amistad.
Agent Phil Coulson was Nick Fury's right-hand man
and helped him recruit the Avengers team members before spinning off to his own cable series.
However, the actor behind the role, Clark Gregg, went through quite a lot to get to that point.
In a 2016 interview with Marc Maron, Gregg described himself as having been
a functional alcoholic and stated that he regularly used drugs and alcohol before
launching his career as an actor. In fact, he explained that his relationship to drugs and
alcohol was so volatile that he considered his success as an actor to be "a miracle".
Gregg overcame his struggles with substance abuse and became a successful actor within the MCU.
However, he soon found himself faced with another issue. In a 2018 feature in Men's Health,
Clark admitted to having suffered anxiety and panic attacks during his acting career.
He recalled a moment when he was on vacation with his family where he was experiencing
extreme discomfort, in spite of the relaxing settings he was in. Gregg described that these
panic attacks would arrive without the symptoms that commonly precede them, and that he suffered
from heightened anxiety after they passed. Only after beginning cognitive behavior therapy did he
begin to see a change in himself. Like his career, Clark Gregg refers to the therapy as "a miracle."
If Robert Downey Jr. helped create the MCU, then
Stan Lee helped create the "M" in that acronym. Lee, along with his longtime creative partner
Jack Kirby, is responsible for many of Marvel's most iconic original comic book characters.
Once his comic creations became film characters,
Lee made a cameo appearance in each MCU film made in his lifetime.
"I think I know that guy."
While his life was dedicated to these characters and he became a beloved figure to millions of
fans, the last years of Lee's life remain a disturbing mystery played out behind closed doors.
The Hollywood Reporter released a long feature in April 2018 describing the homelife of the
then-95-year-old Lee as a constant battle with multiple people who desired to control
his finances and properties after his death. Among these people was his daughter, J.C. Lee.
That February, a notarized declaration from Lee stated that they normally provided J.C.
a monthly stipend, who often became enraged and demanded more money. The statement also alleged
that she was being manipulated by three ill-meaning men: Lee’s publicist Jerardo
"Jerry" Olivarez, Lee's former manager Keya Morgan, and J.C.'s attorney, Kirk Schenck.
Only a few days after the declaration, Lee's attorney was fired. Many people close to the
artist began to be removed from his life, his communications became limited and monitored,
and Morgan and J.C. took over his estate. According to The Guardian, a year after his
passing, Morgan, who was Stan Lee's business manager, was charged with elder abuse.
Deadpool might not have started
out as an MCU character, but Deadpool 3 will be an MCU film, according to Collider. The previous
two movies were packed with impressive stunt work, but BBC News reports that a failure to
implement proper safety measures led to the tragic death of a stuntperson on the set of Deadpool 2.
People reports that Joi Harris was a 40-year-old motorcycle road racer and stuntwoman who used
her platform to push for more women of color in road racing. Harris marketed herself as, quote,
"the first licensed African American woman in U.S. history to actively compete in sanctioned
motorcycle road racing events." In 2017, she worked as the double for Zazie Beatz's character,
Domino, in Deadpool 2. However, during a stunt on a motorcycle, Harris suffered a fatal crash.
According to The Wrap, the stunt involved Harris driving a motorcycle down a ramp on a flight
of stairs. She lost control and collided with a building. An investigation following the incident
by WorkSafe BC said that 20th Century Fox had violated multiple safety rules, such as setting up
a barrier to protect her from hitting the building and not allowing her to wear a safety helmet.
In addition, Harris was not given an orientation, despite the film being her
first job as a stuntperson. Global News reports that a Vancouver-based production company was
fined approximately $300,000 for these failures. If you or anyone you know is having suicidal
thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.