Billy Bob Thornton is best known for roles in Love Actually, Bad Santa, Fargo, and Landman; aside from a cameo in the animated Harley Quinn, the actor has avoided comic book fare but recently confirmed that he was offered the chance to suit up as one of Marvel's most iconic villains.
Talking on The Playlist's Bingeworthy podcast, the actor reflected on turning down two major villain roles: the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and Owen Davian in J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible III.
"I don’t have much interest in those kinds of roles," Thornton explained. "With the Green Goblin, I didn’t feel like getting up at 4 a.m. for five or six hours of makeup. And with 'Mission: Impossible III,' I didn’t want to be the guy trying to kill Tom Cruise."
"If you’re the bad guy in a big movie like that, audiences remember it forever," he continued. "I prefer to keep things looser and less predictable."
The late Philip Seymour Hoffman ultimately matched wits with Cruise in the third Mission: Impossible movie, while Willem Dafoe made Norman Osborn his own with an iconic performance as Spider-Man's greatest foe.
Based on Thornton's remarks about "six hours of makeup," it sounds like he was approached when the Green Goblin was set to be brought to life with prosthetics rather than a suit.
Doing the rounds to promote Nosferatu last month, Dafoe was asked if he could continue Norman's story in Marvel Studios' Spider-Man 4.
"We'll see. We'll see [Laughs]. I could come back," he teased. "Listen, Tom was great to work with and the whole series of Spider-Man films that I did were great fun. Great fun."
These remarks echo what Dafoe said last year. "If everything was right, sure," he said of a possible return. "I mean, that's a great role. I liked the fact that it's a double role both times. Twenty years ago, and fairly recently, both times [were] very different experiences, but I had a good time on both."
As for why he agreed to return to the role nearly two decades later for 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home, Dafoe has revealed, "I really didn’t want to do a cameo. I wanted to make sure there was something substantial enough to do that wasn’t just a tip of the hat. And the other thing was, I said I really want there to be action — I want to take part in action scenes."
"Because that’s really fun for me. It’s the only way to root the character. Otherwise, it just becomes a series of memes," the actor concluded.
Do you think Thornton would have been a good fit for Green Goblin in Spider-Man?