Considering how important Superman is to the world of comic books, and how massive a pop culture icon he is, it's remarkable that only three actors have ever played the role on the big screen since the 1970s. Part of the reason for that is that, while there have been many more attempts to bring the hero to the screen, many of them have failed for various reasons, which means many actors who could have been Superman never had the chance.
One of Superman movies never made was the J.J. Abrams penned Superman: Flyboy, and one of the actors who auditioned for the lead role when that idea was still in development was Brendan Fraser. His audition included actually putting on the Superman costume, which the actor recently admitted, was like turning into an actual superhero.
You feel kind of invincible, [like] ‘I can fly’ The cape actually makes you think you have the power of flight even though you know you don’t.
One can only imagine what it's like to put on a screen ready version of the Superman costume. Of course, it makes you feel like you can actually fly. We've seen just happen on the screen. With the cape and everything it's not surprising that Brendan Fraser apparently felt like he could leap into the air and actually start soaring, wouldn't you?
Unfortunately, for Fraser, he never really got close to actually becoming Superman. Others, like Paul Walker and James Marsden also auditioned, but Abrams script would never actually get made. When Bryan Singer ended up in the director's chair, he took the project in an entirely new direction and cast Brandon Routh in the movie that would become Superman Returns.
And of course, all of this happened after Tim Burton's ill-fated Superman project, that would have seen Nicholas Cage play the role of the Man of Steel.
Brendan Fraser's comments to Yahoo seem to indicate he doesn't take not getting the role too bad. He's mostly just happy to have been one of the few to actually don the costume. Very few can actually say they've had that chance, and so he wears the fact like a badge of honor, or like a superhero's cape as the case may be.
Henry Cavill would become the third man to actually play Superman on the big screen in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel. The future of the character is in question at this point. None of DC's announced films are Superman or Justice League movies, so there's no obvious place for the character to appear again. Some reports have indicated that Cavill is done with the role, but that seems to be an open question at this point.
Fraser still gets to be part of the popular superhero genre, as he co-stars in the popular Doom Patrol series for the DC Universe streaming service.
