(Credits: Far Out / Alamy / Jay Dixit)
Sun 12 April 2026 13:30, UK
Sebastian Stan has just started being taken seriously as an actor, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a comedy buff.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has an unfortunate track record of plucking out interesting young actors and preventing them from having other opportunities because of how time-consuming it can be to be involved in multiple instalments on a regular basis. Between appearing in solo films, promoting the franchise at conventions, and making cameos in other films or shows, being in the MCU is as much of a curse as it is a gift.
It seemed for many years that Stan was doomed to fall into this trend, as Bucky Barnes had become one of the most popular characters in the franchise ever since he was introduced as the best friend of Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers in Captain America: The First Avenger. However, Stan has been on an absolutely legendary run recently by working on some very challenging, thought-provoking projects.
He ended up winning a Golden Globe for his transformative performance in the dark comedy A Different Man, and he earned an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Actor’ in the same cycle for his brilliant role as Donald Trump in the searing biopic The Apprentice. Even if Stan still has some obligations to Marvel, he’s not backed down in his interests in arthouse films, and will soon collaborate with Radu Jude on a new Frankenstein adaptation.
What’s remarkable about all of his work so far is that he has a very clever, knowing comic sensibility. A Different Man has some very dark themes, but it also examines the absurdity of a man who is imprisoned by his self-image; similarly, The Apprentice satirises Trump, and how he was hoisted from a powerful family into becoming an incompetent power broker. Even Stan’s quips in the MCU films tend to work pretty well because of how well he can nail the one-liners.
As with many cinephiles who grew up in the ‘90s, Stan had an obsession with Jim Carrey and cited Ace Ventura: Pet Detective as one of his all-time favourite films.
“When I was growing up, The Sandlot, the Back to the Future trilogy, and any Jim Carrey movie were, like, my movies,” Stan told Rotten Tomatoes, “Jim Carrey, actually, really was one of the first I loved because he would make me laugh, and I would always imitate him. That was kind of how I started.”
Fascinatingly, Carrey’s career arc is somewhat similar to Stan’s, where he went from being an unknown, niche comedian to one of the biggest movie stars in the world almost overnight, starring in three of 1994’s biggest films, including The Mask, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and Dumb & Dumber.
It led him to initially be viewed as a ‘popular’ actor, but then he earned critical praise for his more serious turns in The Truman Show, Man on the Moon, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so it’s hard to overstate what a big deal his rise to prominence was, and while he hasn’t done much lately outside of his recurring voice role in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, collaborating with Stan on an ambitious arthouse project could be a great way to remind the world of what a unique and inexplicable talent he is.
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