The MCU releases three movies a year, and those movies have huge casts of characters that cross in and out of each other’s movies. Naturally, just like there are characters like Thor and Iron Man who have a clear arc, there are going to be some characters who fall by the wayside.
Getting cast in the MCU can mean a one-way ticket to stardom and a steady paycheck for 11 years. However, it can also mean being squandered on an insignificant role or a storyline that doesn’t get paid off and subsequently forgotten about. Here are 10 Actors You Forgot Appeared In MCU Movies.
Liv Tyler
Since The Incredible Hulk as a whole has been mostly forgotten by the MCU – including what Bruce Banner looked like, with the replacement of Edward Norton – a lot of the cast members, sequel setups, and cliffhangers from that movie have fallen by the wayside.
One of the biggest forgotten elements from The Incredible Hulk is Liv Tyler’s Betty Ross. In the comics, Betty is the Hulk’s primary love interest. She’s his Lois Lane, and Tyler did a great job of playing her. But since Mark Ruffalo took over, Betty hasn’t been mentioned, and he’s fallen in love with Natasha Romanoff instead.
Jeff Bridges
Jeff Bridges played the MCU’s very first villain, way back in 2008’s Iron Man. 11 years later, in Avengers: Endgame, thanks to Thor’s weight gain, alcoholism, sunglasses, and cream-colored cardigans, Tony Stark would call the God of Thunder “Lebowski.”
This confirmed that in the MCU canon, The Big Lebowski exists as a movie and Tony has seen it. But in Iron Man, he didn’t mention to his surrogate father figure and mentor Obadiah Stane that he looks just like the Dude. Then again, he might have been a little preoccupied with his evil plan to usurp him and take over his company.
Tommy Lee Jones
The characters who appeared in Captain America: The First Avenger didn’t have much hope of reappearing since the movie was set 70 years before the rest of the MCU. As it turned out, Cap, Bucky, Peggy, and Red Skull were all safe, but everyone else was stuck in the past.
This included Tommy Lee Jones, who played the U.S. Army colonel who was reluctant to recruit Steve Rogers for the super soldier serum trials. Jones didn’t seem to enjoy playing the character since he described his role as “the one you’ve seen in a thousand movies: the gruff, skeptical officer overseeing a team of talented, slightly sarcastic, specially talented soldiers.”
Tim Roth
Tim Roth’s best-known roles are in Quentin Tarantino movies like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and The Hateful Eight. He’s more of an arthouse movie star than a Hollywood mainstay, but he has taken roles in a couple of bigger blockbusters.
He played the villain in Tim Burton’s remake of Planet of the Apes alongside Mark Wahlberg and Helena Bonham Carter, and he also played the villain in the oft-forgotten MCU film The Incredible Hulk. He played Emil Blonsky, better known as the Abomination, a soldier who had no patience for the Hulk and eventually became his own giant monster for a fair fight.
Kat Dennings
Kat Dennings is famous for comedic roles in films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and TV shows like 2 Broke Girls, but she actually played a character named Darcy in the first two Thor movies. As a comic actor, she simply felt out of place in those movies.
It’s a shame for Dennings because the Thor movies and their title character became funny after The Dark World. If she had carried through into Ragnarok somehow, she would’ve felt right at home, because the movie was basically a comedy. She just didn’t fit in with the serious tone of the first couple of movies.
Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci has skyrocketed to huge success since his Oscar-nominated role in The Lovely Bones. His subsequent performances have proven that he’s much more likable and less creepy than he came off in that movie.
He’s since appeared in the Transformers franchise, The Hunger Games franchise, Beauty and the Beast, and he has an undisclosed role in the upcoming untitled Kingsman movie. In Captain America: The First Avenger, he played the German scientist who created the super soldier serum, so it was a pretty important role. Tucci has claimed that he only accepted the role because it gave him a chance to play a character with a German accent and he’d always wanted to try that.
Garry Shandling
Fans of The Larry Sanders Show were surprised when their favorite fictional talk show host showed up in Iron Man 2 to play Senator Stern, the guy who wanted to take Tony Stark down. Ultimately, the U.S. government was the main villain in Iron Man 2, not Whiplash or Justin Hammer, and Shandling led that charge. He later reappeared in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, revealing his allegiance to Hydra.
Garry Shandling came upon the standup comedy scene with such greats as Jerry Seinfeld, and he went on to be remembered as one of comedy’s greatest stars. Sadly, he passed away in 2016, taking a chapter of comedy history with him.
Chris O’Dowd
Chris O’Dowd’s role in Thor: The Dark World was so forgettable that even he forgot about it. The IT Crowd star was asked about his role in what is arguably the MCU’s worst movie and told the interviewer, “God, I forgot that I was in that one until you just mentioned it. I was like, why is he talking to me about Marvel movies?”
His character’s name was Richard and he was just a guy who went on a date with Jane Foster in Thor’s absence. Of course, when Thor came back, his character quickly became redundant. Maybe Richard gave Jane a call after she was cut out of the MCU.
Glenn Close
It might be easy to forget that Glenn Close of Fatal Attraction and Dangerous Liaisons fame appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy. There was so much going on in that movie, it introduced us to so many great characters, and it shook up the MCU with its comic tone. But Close was in it, playing Nova Prime, the leader of the Nova Corps.
She hasn’t yet reappeared, but Close called playing the character “the most fun.” Earlier this year, the actress was on track to finally win an Oscar for her critically acclaimed character work in the contemplative drama The Wife, but she lost to Olivia Colman for her equally acclaimed turn in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite.
Ty Burrell
When an actor has played an iconic character on TV for a few years, then it becomes impossible to see them as anyone other than the character. Neil Patrick Harris did this twice; he shook his Doogie Howser persona by playing Barney Stinson, and then he couldn’t shake the Barney Stinson persona. No matter who Ty Burrell plays, it’s impossible not to see him as Phil Dunphy.
That’s why it will surprise some fans that Burrell actually appeared in The Incredible Hulk, a year before Modern Family premiered on ABC. Burrell played Doc Samson, prior to Samson acquiring his superhuman abilities.
