Jeremy Allen White, who has risen to massive Hollywood success in recent years, is revealing why he may have missed out on starring in a Marvel-related movie as well as his reaction to constantly being hounded by paparazzi now.
During an interview for British GQ‘s latest cover, The Bear actor said he knew a superhero movie opportunity would eventually make its way to him, given that so many fellow rising stars have found themselves in a similar place. But he has previously expressed that he doesn’t understand how the “pinnacle of an actor’s career” seems to end up at Marvel, one of Disney’s top studios.
Once White got his chance to sit down with Marvel execs, however, it didn’t go nearly as planned. “I had a meeting for a kind of Marvel-y movie, and I had an attitude,” White explained. “I think I played it all wrong.” The actor admitted that he has been skeptical of superhero films.
“ ‘Tell me about why should I do your movie,’” White recalled saying to the execs. “They were like, ‘Fuck you.’ And I was like, ‘Right on.’”
Though White knows Marvel gets “really good filmmakers to do those movies and obviously they get really good actors to do those movies,” he doesn’t regret how his meeting ended, adding, “I played it the way I wanted to play it.”
Apart from superhero flicks, another piece that comes with a certain level of fame is paparazzi – something that White is not very fond of.
Earlier in the interview, the Shameless actor noted that this past year has “been insane,” with an increase in attention from tabloids on top of his wife of more than three years, Addison Timlin, filing for divorce in May. “A lot of high highs, a lot of terribly low lows,” he added.
White will likely never be comfortable with the constant pestering from the paparazzi, especially when they get too close to his family, such as showing up at his daughter’s soccer game. He said he tried to reason with them at one point, saying, “ Please don’t take pictures of our children. That’s not OK,” but that didn’t seem to work. White eventually started to wear the same outfit to every game to try to deter the tabloids.
He noted that “they did kind of stop” after that, but paparazzi in general will always be “such a weird aspect of this thing that I truly never thought I would ever deal with whatsoever. It’s not fun, and it’s not nice, and it’s really weird.”
As for what’s next for White, he’s been enjoying the time off from acting to focus on his two daughters after doing a lot of traveling while filming The Iron Claw. Though the current SAG-AFTRA strike has also played a part in his break, the actor explained that “leaving your kids at all is brutal,” which is why he needed to take some time to temporarily step away from the industry.
“With everything going on in my personal life, I thought, ‘OK, let’s just pump the brakes in general, and maybe you don’t work for a while,’” White said. “I made this choice to not work for the rest of the year and just be with my daughters and just slow it all down.”
White’s upcoming film, The Iron Claw, which also stars Zac Efron, hits theaters on Dec. 22.
