Jon Favreau almost cast Sam Rockwell as Iron Man?

Jon Favreau has begun the massive promotional tour for IRON MAN 2 that will run from now until right up to the May 7th release and in one of his first full interviews on the film, he got talking about Sam Rockwell, who stars as the villainous Justin Hammer. Hammer is a fierce rival of Tony Stark’s and uses the sudden appearance of Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) to help bring down Stark and his empire. But it was almost a completely different role that Favreau wanted Rockwell to play: Iron Man himself.

As Favreau tells it, Rockwell was on his very short list of actors he wanted to play Tony Stark/Iron Man. Says Favs, “There was some things he would bring to the role that would have been great. Sam is very charismatic and when I was looking at the character there was a list and he had a spot on it, which might have surprised some people.”

Of course also on that list was Robert Downey, Jr. who probably won out because of simple name recognition. But it just goes to show that there are different types of actors out there for superhero roles besides the same few guys over and over again. Part of IRON MAN’s manic success was the casting of Downey which, at the time, was an unexpected choice. I’m not sure Rockwell will have a chance to play his own superhero but I’d love to see another director give him a shot.