Billy Bob Thornton has revealed in a new interview that he previously rejected offers to play Green Goblin in 2002’s Spider-Man, along with the main villain in 2005’s Mission Impossible 3.
The Playlist reported on Wednesday (December 18) that its podcast Bingeworthy has a new episode with the veteran actor, released the next day. Thornton talked about getting offered roles as villains in the mid-aughts blockbuster films. He currently stars in Paramount+‘s Landman, a series created by Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone).
“I don’t have much interest in those kinds of roles,” Thornton admitted. “With the Green Goblin, I didn’t feel like getting up at 4 a.m. for five or six hours of makeup.”
“And with Mission: Impossible III, I didn’t want to be the guy trying to kill Tom Cruise,” he continued. “If you’re the bad guy in a big movie like that, audiences remember it forever. I prefer to keep things looser and less predictable.”
The Green Goblin was famously portrayed by Willem Dafoe in the 2002 film, along with the 2021 blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home. The role of the main villain in Mission Impossible 3 went to the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, who starred alongside Cruise as arms dealer and terrorist Owen Davian.
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Thornton is slated for a voice role in The Electric State, an upcoming Netflix sci-fi film directed by Joe and Anthony Russo.
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The Russo Brothers previously shared with NME that they think Thornton “would make a great Joe Exotic” in a possible biopic about the eccentric Tiger King subject.
Exotic was portrayed by John Cameron Mitchell in the 2022 limited series Joe Vs. Carole, which was awarded two stars by NME.
“Where the comedy of the documentary was mostly unintentional – a pantomime of absurdity by people who were possibly too stupid to know why they were becoming memes – the new show works much harder for its laughs,” NME‘s Paul Bradshaw wrote.
“McKinnon and Mitchell look like they’ve watched every single series and spin-off possible to pull off their cartoon characters so perfectly, but they’re still both in the kind of show that feels like it’s made for your annoying friend who dresses up as Joe Exotic for Halloween.”
In Cruise-related news, the teaser trailer for the franchise-concluding Mission Impossible 8 was released last month.