Shazam's Mark Strong Turned Down a Major Role in X-Men: First Class

Mark Strong is putting on his villain pants again, this time as Doctor Savanah in Shazam. The British actor has a knack for playing movie villains and is often typecast as one, even though he has played a few good characters, like Merlin from Kingsman. It turns out that even he gets tired of always playing the bad guy since he turned down a major villain role for 2011's X-Men: First Class.

How major? He was offered the role of Sebastian Shaw, the main villain of that film. Strong revealed this during an interview with ComingSoon, mentioning how he just played a number of villains prior to the offer and wanted to do something else. In the end, it was Kevin Bacon who portrayed the energy-absorbing villain and he did a stellar job.

"Matthew Vaughn did ask me to do X-Men: First Class. There was a bad guy inX-Menthat Kevin Bacon played.Because I speak German it just seemed so logical having worked with him that I would play that part, but I think at that point we both felt… I think I had just done Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes and it had been just too many bad guys very recently. So that one we didn't go down the path of that."

With Shazam gaining a number of positive reviews, it seems like Strong still has a knack to play good villains. Granted, he isn't alone as Zachary Levi and Asher Angel are the leads and have to be likeable for the audience so they can gravitate toward the heroes and hate Strong's villain.

Shazam is now showing in theaters.

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