(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 7 January 2026 14:30, UK
Integrity doesn’t always pay off quickly, but in the long run, it can define a career. Jeremy Renner knew this early on. Long before he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Hawkeye, he turned down major roles and big money offers. He chose principle over paycheck, even when one of those offers was a lead role in a now-iconic superhero franchise.
The actor had not long found himself landing more sizable parts on the big screen when he was offered the titular role of Hellboy in the movie adaptation. He’d just played Jeffrey Dahmer in David Jacobson’s Dahmer, proving himself to be a capable leading man, albeit one well-suited to dark roles, so it didn’t feel far-fetched for the actor to be asked to try out for Guillermo del Toro’s unconventional take on the superhero film.
Hellboy sees a strange half-demon emerge from a supernatural portal at the end of World War I, only for the Allied Forces to save him, so years later, he decides to use his powers to protect people against other supernatural threats, even if with his red skin, he looks every bit the Devil.
Ron Perlman took on the role of the jacked superhero in the end, with the movie performing well at the box office and helping to further put del Toro on the map, a big break that could’ve been for Renner, but he just felt nothing towards the script, ultimately deciding that it wasn’t worth taking on a role he wasn’t interested in purely for the money.
“I said no to more money than I’ll probably ever make,” he once told Men’s Health, “I was focused on what I wanted to do and how. I just felt, if I wasn’t connected to the material, even though it was a great director and a great job, I don’t know how I’m going to do anything exceptional.”
That’s a wise decision to make, because there’s nothing worse than watching a movie and recognising that the actor’s heart isn’t really in it.
Instead, Renner kept working on films he felt more drawn to, eventually receiving his mainstream breakthrough with a role in the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, for which he was even nominated for ‘Best Actor’ at the Academy Awards, before bagging another nomination the following year for his role in the Ben Affleck-directed The Town.
Then came his tenure as a staple part of the Marvel franchise, which has taken him from Thor to Avengers: Endgame and Black Widow, while he has also landed himself roles in the Mission: Impossible and Knives Out franchises.
Evidently, Renner’s career has worked out pretty well for him without Hellboy, and he can hardly say he’s missed out on some lucrative pay cheques, considering that he has starred in one of the most commercially successful movie franchises of all time.
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