In his very first movie role, Reacher star Alan Ritchson appeared in a fantasy shoot. Even though he isn’t recognizable in the movie, he loved being on set with acting legends.
Reacher star Alan Ritchson is the talk of the town. After season 3 of the Amazon hit, he has an action movie in the works that is already making headlines. When he landed his first role 20 years ago in the animated fantasy epic Beowulf, no one knew him. But he loved the shoot anyway.
15 years before Reacher: Alan Ritchson could hardly believe he was shooting his first film
As Ritchson explains in an interview with WIRED, he initially worked as a model in Los Angeles, but eventually applied for small film and TV roles. It turned out to be a stroke of luck for him:
I got three offers from my first three auditions: [First,] Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf. So there I was on set, eating lobster with legends, thinking, ‘This is exactly my thing.’
His other offers included a role in the horror film The Butcher, which he got because he “died really well in the audition.” The third was a famous DC superhero.
The Beowulf film adaptation by Back to the Future master Robert Zemeckis adapts the Old English epic of the same name: The warrior Beowulf travels to Denmark to free King Hrothgar from the monster Grendel. But after defeating the creature, its mother takes bloody revenge.
Even big Ritchson fans won’t remember his Beowulf role. And that’s no surprise: the Reacher star wasn’t hired for the animated fantasy film as a regular actor or voice actor, but as a motion capture model for the main character. Beowulf’s muscular physique is therefore based on Ritchson. The voice in the original, however, is provided by Ray Winstone (The Departed).
Winstone, alongside Zemeckis, could also have been one of the “legends” who made the shoot so exhilarating for Ritchson. The cast also included Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs), John Malkovich (Being John Malkovich) and Robin Wright (Forrest Gump), among others.
The star-studded cast did not help the fantasy epic: Zemeckis’ film was a brutal flop in 2007. Ritchson, who took off 15 years later with Reacher, doesn’t care today. He just remembers the Hummer.
Podcast: Why series like Reacher and The Night Agent are trending right now
The Night Agent is a hit on Netflix, Amazon Prime is thrilling viewers with Reacher, and Disney+ has the series Tracker. But why are these so-called “dad series” so popular right now?
In our podcast, we take a closer look at the phenomenon of agents, ex-military personnel, and other capable lone wolves and explore the appeal of these action thrillers in today’s world.
