Jake Gyllenhaal debuted in the MCU when he starred as Mysterio in 2019’s Spiderman: Far From Home, but little did fans know he almost replaced Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man in the Sam Raimi films. With all these opportunities for the actor, he was never enthusiastic about it.
The Nightcrawler star has repeatedly addressed this in his past interviews, and he was aware that Marvel clearly wanted him on board for various reasons. Still, Gyllenhaal did not seem to view these types of projects as rewarding for his career.
Jake Gyllenhaal Almost Became Spider-Man In Sam Raimi’s 2004 Film
Before Jake Gyllenhaal landed the role of Mysterio, he was already being courted to join the Spider-Man franchise years earlier. He was considered to take up the mantle of Peter Parker after original star Tobey Maguire had several issues with the project.
It was claimed that Maguire suffered back injuries that hampered his ability to perform certain stunts. When Sam Raimi was ready to proceed with Spider-Man 2, the actor felt he was not being compensated properly. Columbia Pictures got the impression that Maguire was taking advantage of his back problems to negotiate his salary.
The studio decided to recast Maguire, and one of the actors in the line-up was Gyllenhaal. In the middle of finding the next Spider-Man star, Maguire’s team decided to smooth things over with the studio, and he eventually got the role back.
Gyllenhaal was aware of the hullabaloos happening around the Spider-Man recasting. Speaking to Yahoo!, he opened up about this issue:
“I heard the same thing. The truth of the matter is, in the end, [Tobey Maguire is] Spider-Man. There are so many roles in my career where I was up against another actor, or there was something happened that possibly could’ve happened but didn’t happen, but maybe it would have.”
At this point, the actor remained nonchalant about the roles he could have had but slipped away from his fingers. He added:
“Eventually, my belief is when an actor’s played a character, particularly in a movie, the character’s theirs, and that’s that. But yeah, there was talk, he hurt himself, and there was talk. There was a slew of actors [possibly up for the part], and I was one of them.”
Interestingly, he joined the Spider-Man franchise in 2019. Perhaps he was not meant to be the hero but the antagonist. Still, Gyllenhaal told Independent:
“A lot of other movies you have a lot of spectacle going on, but the characters [in Spider-Man] are sort of, ‘stamp this one in, stamp that one out’. There’s not a lot of opportunity.”
It seems that no matter what the Spider-Man team does to make Gyllenhaal love them, he is just completely not enamored with the films.
Jake Gyllenhaal Still Enjoyed Portraying Mysterio
While Jake Gyllenhaal was not particularly devoted to his MCU career, he admitted it was fun playing Mysterio, and it helped him rediscover the joy of acting. The Prisoners star told Vanity Fair:
“It was such a cathartic thing to be able to throw away all that seriousness and really become the actor that I think I’ve always wanted to be. I think that we go through journeys in our life where we’re finding ourselves, and in the case of Spider-Man, I think I realized, ‘Hey, acting is really fun, you know, enjoy it!’”
Gyllenhaal’s career stint at MCU may be brief, but that was probably all he needed to experience the wonders of the giant franchise.
