The Big Picture
- Ralph Ineson joins Fantastic Four as Galactus, his second MCU role after playing a Ravager in Guardians of the Galaxy.
- Actors like Chris Evans and Jon Favreau have played multiple Marvel roles, blending TV and movies seamlessly.
- Some actors, like Evans and Michael B. Jordan, have switched roles to iconic MCU characters after playing members of The Fantastic Four.
Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four reboot is assembling an eclectic cast, with a string of high-profile actors including John Malkovich and Natasha Lyonne having joined the highly anticipated Matt Shakman film, which already boasts an impressive lineup with Pedro Pascal, Julia Garner, and Vanessa Kirby. Additionally, Ralph Ineson has been cast as Galactus, the planet-devouring supervillain who is one of The Fantastic Four’s most iconic enemies from Marvel Comics. This actually marks Ineson’s second trip to the MCU, with the English actor having previously made a brief appearance as a member of Yondu Udonta’s (Michael Rooker) Ravager faction in Guardians of the Galaxy. This makes Ineson the latest in a steadily growing list of actors who have played more than one role in a Marvel movie. Who else has double-dipped?
Fantastic Four (2025)
Superhero
Action
Adventure
Sci-Fi
One of Marvel's most iconic families makes it back to the big screen, the Fantastic Four.
- Release Date
- July 25, 2025
- Director
- Matt Shakman
- Cast
- Vanessa Kirby , Pedro Pascal , Ebon Moss-Bachrach , Joseph Quinn
- Main Genre
- Superhero
- Writers
- Josh Friedman , Jeff Kaplan , Stan Lee , Ian Springer
Where Have Actors Doubled Up in the MCU?
One of the less-noticeable ways actors have taken on multiple MCU characters is by doing voice or motion capture work in addition to playing a live action role. Sean Gunn, for instance, is known for playing the flesh and blood role of Kraglin in the Guardians films, but he also does the on-set work needed to bring Rocket Raccoon, the leading CGI character voiced by Bradley Cooper, to physical life, and voiced a younger version of the character shown in flashbacks in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Similarly, Linda Cardellini did the motion capture and voice work for Lylla the otter in the same film after having previously appeared in the live action role of Laura Barton in past MCU projects.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 also contains one of the more notable examples of an actor (other than Stan Lee) who plays two distinct live action roles in different movies in the MCU’s main universe. Michelle Yeoh cameos in the film as a Ravager captain who attends Yondu’s funeral. While she has not yet reprised this role, Yeoh would go on to play Ying Nan, aunt of the titular character in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Other than Yeoh, the other most prominent example of an actor having two such roles is Gemma Chan, who starred as Sersi in Eternals after playing the supporting role of Kree soldier Minn-Erva in Captain Marvel. However, the latter role required such extensive makeup that many viewers who have seen both films likely did not notice the repeated casting.
Many Actors Have Moved Between Marvel TV and Movies
Doubling up on live action roles becomes much more common if one takes Marvel television, especially those shows produced before the introduction of Disney+, into account. Alfre Woodard, who played a leading role in the Marvel Netflix series Luke Cage, also plays a small but pivotal part in Captain America: Civil War, as Miriam Sharpe, a woman who confronts Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) to tell him she blames the Avengers for the death of her son, which occurred in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Woodard’s Luke Cage co-star, Academy Award-winner Mahershala Ali, was also cast as the titular character in Marvel’s upcoming Blade reboot film and has briefly appeared in the new role in a voiceover cameo in Eternals.
And if one considers all Marvel media tangentially linked through the multiverse, as the ongoing Multiverse Saga suggests is the case, it becomes even more common for actors to play two or even more roles. Ali also voices two of the variants of Aaron Davis/the Prowler featured in Sony’s animated films Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse. Many of the actors in the Spider-Verse films, such as Hawkeye's Hailee Steinfeld, have additional Marvel roles, and Ali’s co-star Oscar Isaac has matched him with three so far, the others being the titular characters in the Disney+ series Moon Knight and the film X-Men: Apocalypse. But the title for most distinct parts throughout the multiverse likely goes to Tony Curran, who has appeared in the films Blade II, X-Men: First Class, Thor: The Dark World and the series Daredevil and Secret Invasion. Although his characters are all fairly obscure and none have that much screen time, all of them except the CIA security guard he plays in First Class do contribute to the plots of their respective properties in significant ways.
Deadpool Hilariously Called Out Josh Brolin's Repeat Casting
Most instances of repeated casting seem to be caused by little more than the actors coincidentally fitting all of their respective roles and are usually not acknowledged by the later projects they appear in. However, there are a few examples that are harder for viewers to ignore. Kevin Bacon, for instance, appeared in First Class as supervillain Sebastian Shaw before playing a fictionalized version of himself in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.
Jon Favreau, who directed the first two Iron Man films and has continued to appear sporadically in the MCU as Happy Hogan, also portrayed Franklin “Foggy” Nelson, law partner to Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Ben Affleck) in the 2003 20th Century Fox Daredevil film adaptation. Charlie Cox, who has played the main MCU’s version of Matt since the Daredevil Netflix series premiered in 2015, cameos in the 2021 film Spider-Man: No Way Home. In his brief screen time, one of the few other characters Matt interacts with is, notably, Happy, which some fans interpreted as a subtle reference to Favreau’s earlier role. The most overt acknowledgment of repeated casting, unsurprisingly, comes from the self-aware Deadpool series. In the 2018 Fox film Deadpool 2, Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) refers to his rival, Cable (Josh Brolin) as “Thanos,” directly recalling the villain Brolin plays in the main MCU, including in Avengers: Infinity War, which was released the same year.
Ineson isn’t even the first cast member of a Fantastic Four film to play two Marvel characters. Both Chris Evans and Michael B. Jordan portrayed a member of the team, Johnny Storm/the Human Torch in previous adaptations, before going on to their more successful and famous roles as Steve Rogers/Captain America and N’Jadaka/Erik Killmonger, respectively, in the main MCU. Jordan’s cast mate Kate Mara, who played Johnny’s sister Sue Storm/the Invisible Woman in 2015’s Fant4stic from Josh Trank, had also previously appeared in Iron Man 2 as a U.S. Marshall who serves Tony with a subpoena. Ineson's own cast mate, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who is set to play Ben Grimm/the Thing in the Shakman film, also appeared as David Lieberman/Micro in Daredevil spin-off The Punisher.
While the multiverse potentially allows for some of these actors to have their disparate characters meet in future projects, (as DC’s Arrowverse TV franchise did with some of its multi-role performers), some creators may view that kind of storytelling twist as too self-referential and potentially immersion-breaking for the audience. If that’s the case, it’s likely future acknowledgments, if there are any, will be similar in nature to the brief Deadpool 2 scene, with only self-aware characters like Wade or Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) aware of the intertextual connections. Who knows what sort of casting jokes Deadpool has in store for Deadpool & Wolverine.
The Fantastic Four will be released in theaters July 25, 2025.
