Jude Law Reveals Why He Turned Down Superman Role

Actor Brandon Routh ultimately played the part of Superman in Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, a reboot for the character that unfortunately didn't quite land with audiences.

While the issue really wasn't with Routh, it turns out that the director really wanted actor Jude Law to play the part, at least initially. During a visit to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the actor filled Colbert in on why he chose not to play the coveted role.

"This was a while ago, so you remember they were rebooting Superman, not this last time with Henry Cavill, they did it once before, um, (in 2004), yeah, when I was obviously young enough to play Superman."

He continued: "So I was approached and at the time I don't know, I just, it didn't float my boat you know, like I just really didn't want to go there, um. 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. Send the suit over."

"So there's a knock on my hotel room, there's a guard, a big guard, right, and this lady from the wardrobe and they bring the suit in, and I'm like "I'm not going to try the suit on in front of you", I was like I'm going to go in the bathroom, right. 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. I though this, and the music kinda comes in like da, da, dada duh duh, right, I stood there and then I had this picture of that, 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."

A Jude Law Superman would've certainly been interesting, I'll give it that.