You’d think playing one iconic character would be enough for Charlie Cox, but you’d be wrong—according to The Hollywood Reporter, the Daredevil star auditioned for the role of the young Han Solo that went to Hail, Caesar!’s Alden Ehrenreich. But Matt Murdock’s mannerisms were so ingrained in Cox that he failed to impress at the audition. In the interview, Cox says he failed to connect with the casting director when he did his best impression of a rakish smuggler, because he was still doing his best impression of the Hell’s Kitchen vigilante.
Turns out Cox avoids making eye contact when playing Murdock in the Netflix series, and that habit’s permeated into his real life. So when he was trying to convince the casting director for the planned Star Wars prequel that he had the swaggering demeanor of a young Han Solo, he did so while staring off or otherwise looking away. Cox was asked why he wasn’t looking at the person he was auditioning for, but he apparently didn’t cop to still being in Murdock/Daredevil mode. He didn’t get a callback, but he did score the leads—yes, plural—in an off-Broadway play, so it kind of worked out.