Jake Gyllenhaal is currently promoting
Spider-Man: Far From Home, a movie that sees him take on the role of Mysterio. However, it was over fifteen years ago that the actor very nearly ended up starring as Peter Parker himself in
Spider-Man 2 when it looked like Tobey Maguire would be forced to drop out.
The actor had injured his back on
Seabiscuit and his return was looking unlikely, so Sony Pictures started looking elsewhere and Gyllenhaal was named as the favourite to replace him.
Now, he's revealed how close that came to becoming a reality.
"There are so many roles in my career where I was up against another actor, or something happened that possibly could’ve happened but didn’t happen but maybe it would have. 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 [Maguire] hurt himself and there was talk," he confirmed. "And there was a slew of actors [possibly up for the part], and I was one of them."
It doesn't sound like he was as close to playing the wall-crawler as we were led to believe at the time, and Gyllenhaal has largely stayed away from blockbusters since. Why? Blame it on Prince of Persia. "I think I learned a lot from that movie in that I spend a lot of time trying to be very thoughtful about the roles that I pick and why I’m picking them. And you’re bound to slip up and be like, ‘That wasn’t right for me,’ or ‘That didn’t fit perfectly.’ There have been a number of roles like that."
Gyllenhaal is fantastic in Spider-Man: Far From Home, and with the movie receiving rave reviews from critics, here's hoping he considers doing working on more big releases moving forward!
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