Marvel‘s casting department is renowned for their excellent casting choices. It’s part of what helped them develop their mega-successful franchise that’s going strong all these years later.
For instance, take Chris Pratt, who was cast as Star-Lord for Guardians of the Galaxy!
The actor perfectly embodies the fun but complex hero in several films across the franchise. However, he faced stiff competition from a talented batch of actors to earn a chance to join the Avengers.
In a franchise that already had several (expertly cast) actors named Chris on the team, he was introduced as the plucky and smart-mouthed Peter Quill in 2014. Since then, he’s stepped out with the team of heroes multiple times, most recently in 2023′s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
While he is now synonymous with the part, we did some digging and rounded up 15 other actors who auditioned for the opportunity. Interestingly, there are even rumors about who were the second and third choices.
Some of his competitors went on to act alongside Chris in the MCU. One even joined the cast of the first Guardians movie in another role. Others have fronted their own mega-successful franchises.
This week marks the first movie’s 10th anniversary. In honor of that, we rounded up all of the actors who were in the running for the part.
Scroll through the slideshow to see who else could have played Star-Lord in the Marvel Cinematic Universe…
