These days, it looks as if every actor in Hollywood is signing up for a role in the MCU. At San Diego Comic Con this year, the Marvel Studios panel exuded star power as big names including Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek and Mahershala Ali took the stage to be inducted into the huge universe. But what about the ones who got away? There have to be a ton of actors who were up for parts in the universe and ultimately didn’t join.
It looks like Mamma Mia! star Amanda Seyfried is among them. She has revealed that she could have been Gamora in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. In her words:
I turned down one once and they haven’t called back since. And it was a big’un. I don’t regret it because I didn’t want to be green for six months out of every year. They tell beautiful stories through superheroes, and my daughter’s now really obsessed with superheroes now, and part of me wishes I’d done it, but the other part of me is like ‘I had a life to live’ and I don’t think I would’ve been happy.
As the great philosopher Kermit the Frog once said, it’s not easy being green. It’s a fact of life Marvel’s Gamora Zoe Saldana knows well, and the main reason Amanda Seyfried decided to pass on the badass character. Saldana has played Gamora in four movies across six years, and each time she comes into work, she has to sit in a makeup chair for five hours before she can act in the role. It’s a huge commitment for an actor to make and Amanda Seyfried didn’t think she’d be up for it.
Props to her for knowing her limits. Jennifer Lawrence famously had to be put in extensive makeup for the X-Men franchise and started to grow tired of being painted blue from head to toe to play Mystique. By the time she got around to Dark Phoenix, the makeup artists looked like they tried to compromise for the actress, but it resulted in a lazy look for the character. Take a look:
It is interesting to hear about one of the other actresses that was in the running for Gamora. Amanda Seyfried has taken on a ton of different roles throughout her career, such as her iconic characters in Mean Girls, Mamma Mia! And Les Miserables. But she has yet to head to the superhero genre. The closest she’s come is probably in the 2011 sci-fi film In Time with Justin Timberlake. She offered up another good reason why the MCU may not be her jam to MTV:
It’s so much more fulfilling to be in a scene with another human, doing human things, talking about real life and that’s what we did [in The Art of Racing in the Rain].
The actress is currently promoting her newest movie, The Art of Racing in the Rain, where she plays the wife to a race car driver (Milo Ventimiglia) and his trusty Golden Retriever, Enzo (Kevin Costner).
As for Gamora, she’ll return to the big screen in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, confirmed to be in the works, but is some ways away since writer/director James Gunn is committed to making The Suicide Squad first.
