Sebastian Stan would have been a different man if not for Marvel.
The actor recently told Vanity Fair that before being cast as Bucky Barnes in 2011 MCU tentpole feature “Captain America: The First Avenger,” his career was basically at a standstill. At the time, Stan was financially relying on residuals from 2010 comedy “Hot Tub Time Machine.” Stan played an ’80s frat jock who is the ski lodge villain of the film.
“I was actually struggling with work. I had just gotten off the phone with my business manager, who told me I was saved by $65,000 that came in residuals from ‘Hot Tub Time Machine,’” Stan said about how his career was going before he was offered the Marvel role. More than a decade later, and Stan is still in the MCU: The actor is leading “Thunderbolts,“ which will usher in Phase 5 of the franchise.
As Stan told Variety in 2024, “Thunderbolts” is Marvel’s version of Miloš Forman’s Oscar-winning 1975 film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which centered on a mutinous uprising in a psych ward. He added at the time that the debates over the merit of Marvel movies are redundant.
“It’s become really convenient to pick on [Marvel films]. And that’s fine. Everyone’s got an opinion,” Stan said. “But they’re a big part of what contributes to this business and allows us to have smaller movies as well. This is an artery traveling through the system of this entire machinery that’s Hollywood. It feeds in so many more ways than people acknowledge.”
He added, “Sometimes I get protective of it because the intention is really fucking good. It’s just fucking hard to make a good movie over and over again. In the last couple of years, I’ve gotten much more aggressive about pursuing things that I want, and I’m constantly looking for different ways of challenging myself.”
Glen Powell and Chris Pine have both also shared how their careers were faring before their respective big breaks. Powell told Interview that he was paid $35,000 for his small role in 2017’s “Hidden Figures,” which was the only film he starred in for a year’s time. “It’s that point in your career where you’re barely getting by,” he said. “There’s a lot of things I could have done in terms of guest spots, but basically, I made a decision to use my old UT [University of Texas] economics class, which is just supply and demand, and take supply out of it and hope demand would follow. Just letting the town know I’m not going to take those things that are the obvious choices that guys take at this moment in their career. That was the hardest part for me, because I was dead broke. But I remembered at that moment trying to be discerning and not go down the wrong path.”
