Four-time NBA champion Shaquille O’Neal recently spoke to Variety and revealed that his own stardom got in the way of his opportunities to appear in action movies.
“I would love to do more action roles, but we were told by top Hollywood executives that I’m too big, and what they mean by that is when I pop up on the screen everyone will go, ‘Oh, that’s Shaq!’ So, if I’m trying to play a doctor or anything, my character won’t be believable,” he said.
He even wanted to star in the Avengers, but he revealed that Marvel had to turn him down, not just because of his stature but also because of how famous his own name is as a brand among the people.
“I wanted to be in the ‘Avengers,’ and they were like, ‘Shaq, we f–kin’ love you, and we’d love to put you in, but if your face pops up on screen people are going to go, ‘Hey, that’s Shaq!’ He said it truthfully, and I was like, alright… I guess my face is too big-time.”
O’Neal had initially declared in 2018 that he hoped to get a role in the Avengers while hilariously taking a jab at Robert Downey Jr.
“I would love to be in one of the Avengers movies,” Shaquille O’Neal told EW in 2018. “I would like to kick Robert Downey Jr.’s a–.”
Shaquille O’Neal then told Variety that he is hoping to partner up with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson for a movie.
“I want to do a movie with The Rock so I can beat him up,” he declares.
But unfortunately, his dream of starring in a Marvel movie seems to be dead now. After his retirement, O’Neal has starred in several movies.
The Lakers legend did play a superhero much earlier in his career, as the protagonist vigilante in DC’s Steel, even though an Iron Man vs. O’Neal matchup never materialized.
A 25-year-old O’Neal played the brilliant engineer who creates a mechanized suit that mimics Superman’s abilities in the 1997 film.
“It was an amazing opportunity,” O’Neal said to EW in 2018. “But I want to redo it and get some of these special effects from 2018.”
In most of the roles he got, he played only himself, not another character on screen. Shaquille O’Neal built himself a $500 million business empire, but his name was apparently too big for him to do any other role than himself in a movie. A type of problem only A-list celebrities face, I guess.
