A relative unknown before being cast as crime-fighter Daredevil, Charlie Cox now joins the legion of Hollywood-conquering British heart-throbs. We had a chat with him – and found ourselves smitten!
A relative unknown before being cast as crime-fighter Daredevil, Charlie Cox now joins the legion of Hollywood-conquering British heart-throbs. We had a chat with him – and found ourselves smitten!
He’s not your cliched action movie star.
He may have caught his big break as a Marvel character, but his filmography goes beyond the cookie-cutter superhero type.
Pre-Daredevil, he was a regular in American period crime drama Boardwalk Empire, and later appeared in the Oscar-winning The Theory of Everything in 2014 as Stephen Hawking’s ex-wife Jane’s second husband. Currently, he’s starring in Incognito, an off -Broadway play in New York.
Charlie admits that he had no martial arts background when he started filming Daredevil. “I had an amazing stunt double who did a lot of the heavy lifting in the first season, but as the show developed, I was able to do more of the sequences,” he says. An actor who can kick ass and emote – just what we like!
He does his own stunts! Well, some of them, at least.
“The second season was particularly fun because I was involved in a lot of the action,” he says. “The Daredevil signature moves such as the flip kicks... those were obviously not me. But I can do hand-to-hand combat and learn the choreography quite well.”
His Daredevil co-star Elodie Yung (who plays Elektra and has a black belt in karate in real life) has said she feels lazy in comparison. As she told GQ, “he’d train by himself and do the whole choreography ... The fight scenes and the action – when I watch the show, I’m quite impressed.” His well-defined abs – and us – thank him for his hard work.
He’s brought the character of Matt Murdock/Daredevil to life.
Thanks to the length of the series and his acting chops, Charlie was able to develop the emotional complexity of his lawyer-by-day, vigilante-by-night character to its fullest potential. And this makes for a much more fascinating take on what would otherwise have been yet another cartoonish, one-dimensional superhero.
“Matt Murdock’s incredibly brave and kind and selfless, but at the same time, he suff ers from very human character flaws – he’s stubborn, deeply arrogant and has a child-like belief in his invincibility,” he says. “Hopefully, you relate to him because he makes mistakes that we all make.”
Above all, he’s down-to-earth.
Charlie Cox isn’t one of those actors who’s larger-than-life in person. He’s good-looking, that’s for sure, but instead of dazzling star quality, what makes him so likeable is his Everyman affability. And when you interview a rising star who introduces himself to you, offers you a seat before he takes his own, and takes the time to give long, thoughtful answers to questions, it’s easy to see why he was given the thumbs-up for the role – he is extremely relatable, and that, in turn, makes Daredevil relatable for all of us.
Catch Charlie Cox in Daredevil. Both seasons one and two are available on Netflix Singapore (www.netflix.com) now.
