UPDATE: Guillermo del Toro has since clarified that Renner wasn't offered the role of Hellboy, but instead the role of Agent Myers, which ultimately went to Rupert Evans. So a leading role, but not THE leading role.
Years before landing the Hawkeye role in the MCU, Jeremy Renner reveals he was offered the lead in The Avengers.
Renner would play Hawkeye again in 2015's reprise Hawkeye again for a Disney+ streaming series, although that project isn't official yet.
However, years before the MCU served as Renner's introduction to the world of superhero films, it turns out the actor was offered the lead role in Guillermo del Toro's 2004 Hellboy movie. It's hard to imagine anyone but Ron Perlman leading that film, but Renner told Justin Long on a recent edition of the Life is Short podcast (via EW) that he was indeed approached, but turned down the part despite lots of money being offered. Here's what he had to say.
I was just reading the script and [thinking] like, ‘I don’t get this…’ I just couldn’t connect to it. I said, ‘I can’t find a way in [to this character], I don’t know what I’d be doing,’ so I had to say no. [...] There’s zero regrets, zero. Most of the time it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m glad I didn’t do it,’ and it made sense to me. Not just Hellboy or whatever it was, and I’m not saying that it’s a good or bad movie, it’s not about that… I just wouldn’t have fit there.
As is made clear by his comments above, Renner has no long-term regrets about turning down the Hellboy role, and considering that his career has only risen further since ing the MCU, it's not hard to imagine why. Additionally, he obviously didn't connect with the material on a personal level, and Perlman went on to earn raves for his work, suggesting that everything in this scenario turned out for the best.
Perlman would of course end up returning for 2008 sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army, although he and del Toro never managed to get a third film off the ground. Hellboy was rebooted earlier this year, with proved to be a critical and commercial disaster. Whether or not this leads to Hollywood giving del Toro and Perlman another crack at Hellboy remains to be seen, but considering that Perlman is 69, time may be running out. Either way, Renner seems happy to keep doing what he's doing, and not wonder what might've been.
Source: Life is Short (via EW)
