There are plenty of huge names in Hollywood who have come along and taken a role in a comic book movie -- both Marvel and DC Comics movies. Oscar winners have joined the MCU, with names like Anthony Hopkins, Benicio Del Toro, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Bridges and Brie Larson among the names of statue holders who have taken on key roles in different movies in the MCU alone. Add in genre favorites like Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Pratt and Scarlet Johansson and it seems like everyone today wants to be in a superhero movie.
With all the big name actors who have appeared in these giant Hollywood blockbusters, there are many names that seem to love every minute of it and many of them even come back for more. This isn't just limited to actors reprising roles either, as there are a ton of actors who have played more than one role in a superhero movie, some jumping from Marvel to DC or the other way around, and even others who have taken on more than one role for the same comic book company. There are even a select few that have appeared in three, four or five different superhero movies over their career. When it is this nice, they had to do it twice and here is a look at 30 actors that played in at least two different roles in superhero movies.
30 BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH
Benedict Cumberbatch has something on his resume that no other Marvel Cinematic Universe actor has accomplished. He actually plays two characters in the same movie. Not only that, but the characters he plays are the major superhero in the movie as well as the major antagonist at the end of the film. And he fights himself.
Of course, the movie is Doctor Strange where Cumberbatch plays Doctor Stephen Strange and then also does all the facial motion capture work and voice work for Dormammu. Not only that, but Cumberbatch said that it was his idea to make the villain a reflection of the hero.
29 CHRIS EVANS
Chris Evans is one of those actors who has appeared as not just one or two characters in comic book movies, but he has appeared as six different characters over his career. Evans has portrayed Casey Jones (TMNT), the Human Torch (Fantastic Four), Jensen (The Losers), Lucas Lee (Scott Pilgrim), Curtis (Snowpiercer) and Captain America.
You could even add in Loki (Thor: The Dark World) and Nick Gant (Push) if you wanted to really push things with Evans. From the sound of it, Captain America will be his last superhero role, but he has a career's worth of comic book characters under his belt.
28 JOSH BROLIN
If anyone can match up with Chris Evans when it comes to playing comic book characters, it is Josh Brolin. Unlike Evans, who took on a number of non-superhero roles, Brolin really hit it hard when it came to men in tights. He played Thanos and Cable both last year -- one of the only actors to play two different Marvel characters just mere months apart.
He also took the DC Comics role of Jonah Hex in 2010. Add in a Young Agent K in Men in Black 3, Dwight in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and Joe Doucett in Old Boy, and Brolin matches Chris Evans in major comic book roles.
27 JAMES MARSDEN
Really, the movie that launched the entire comic book craze that has lasted for nearly 20 years now was The X-Men in 2000 and it was James Marsden that portrayed the stoic leader of the group Cyclops. Over the first two movies, he was really overshadowed by Wolverine, which makes sense because Hugh Jackman brought a lot to his character.
However, when Bryan Singer left Fox to make Superman Returns, he hired Marsden for a small role as Lois Lane's husband Richard White. Fox responded by eliminating Cyclops from X-Men: The Last Stand in a scene that happened off-screen, a poor ending for such an important character.
26 REBECCA ROMIJN
Rebecca Romijn really impressed with her role as Mystique in the first three X-Men movies. She was one of the key villains in the first and second movie and was a tragic victim of the mutant cure in X-Men: The Last Stand. Even though Mystique doesn't age, Fox decided to recast the role with Jennifer Lawrence when they made X-Men: First Class.
Interestingly, in between the second and third X-Men movies, Romijn made a different Marvel movie where she starred as one of Frank Castle's friends named Joan in The Punisher in 2004. Romijn returned to comics 12 years later to voice Lois Lane in The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen animated films.
25 BEN FOSTER
In 2006, Ben Foster joined the X-Men franchise as one of the comic books' original members of the team. However, X-Men: The Last Stand changed everything about Angel's origin and just made him the son of one of the men hoping for the mutant cure and his role was small, to say the least.
When Angel returned in X-Men: Apocalypse, it was Ben Hardy who took over the role. It was Foster's last role in a comic book movie but not his first. In 2004, he appeared as one of Frank Castle's companions, Spacker Dave in the Thomas Jane version of The Punisher.
24 NIC CAGE
In the '90s, Kevin Smith and Tim Burton were trying to make a Death of Superman movie and crazily enough, Burton wanted Nic Cage to star in it. While that sounds completely insane, Cage finally got a chance to voice Superman in the 2018 animated film Teen Titans GO! to the Movies and then voiced Spider-Man Noir, perfectly, in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
However, Cage also had two major live-action superhero roles as well. Everyone knows about his two stints as Johnny Blaze in the Ghost Rider movies. In between the two Ghost Rider movies, he also starred as Big Daddy in the sequel to Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass.
23 DONAL LOGUE
For the past few years, DC Comics fans have really gotten to know Donal Logue as he portrayed police detective Harvey Bullock in television's Gotham. However, it wasn't the Batman television prequel that was Logue's introduction to the world of superheroes.
In 1998, Logue portrayed the vampire Quinn, the second-in-command to the main bad guy Deacon Frost in Blade. He returned nine years later to his second Marvel movie, this time Ghost Rider, where he played one of Johnny's close friends..
22 TIM BLAKE NELSON
Tim Blake Nelson played a very famous character from the pages of The Incredible Hulk but he never got a chance to take on the role of The Leader in the movies. He starred as Dr. Samuel Sterns, a man who was helping Bruce Banner try to find a cure but who was really trying to figure out how gamma radiation turned him into the Hulk. The movie ended with Sterns getting gamma radiation on his head and his slow transformation into The Leader.
His second comic book role came in one of the worst movies in the Marvel Universe -- both critically and financially. He portrayed Dr. Harvey Allen in Fantastic Four in 2015, someone who was a military official who tried to use the new superheroes to his advantage in the film.
21 MICHAEL B. JORDAN
Michael B. Jordan had the privilege of being in one of the best comic book movies of all-time and one of the worst. Things didn't start out well when he took on the role of Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in Fantastic Four in 2015. The movie was bashed by critics and was a commercial failure, although Jordan was great in his role.
He rebounded in 2018 when he took on the role of Killmonger in Black Panther. Not only was Black Panther a commercial success but it has received a lot of awards recognition and many critics have called Jordan's villain one of the best in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
20 JENNIFER CONNELLY
Jennifer Connelly has been in two different Marvel movies but was only seen in one and was barely credited in the second. First up, she was Betty Ross in Ang Lee's Hulk. While Liv Tyler replaced her in The Incredible Hulk, Connelly was a stronger love interest for Bruce Banner in that first movie, despite its flaws.
The second time that Connelly appeared in a Marvel movie, it was just her voice -- and it wasn't an animated movie. Connelly voiced Spider-Man's AI in his Tony Stark-created costume. In some great irony, her husband Paul Bettany voiced Stark's armor before taking on his own superhero role as The Vision.
19 J.K. SIMMONS
When Sam Raimi created his Spider-Man trilogy, he chose the perfect man to portray J. Jonah Jameson. Honestly, there might not be anyone in the world who can pull off JJJ better than J.K. Simmons did. From the look to the voice to the body movements and facial tics, he was masterful at his role.
After Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy, there really wasn't anyone that fit the role of Commissioner Gordan better than Gary Oldman. However, somehow, Simmons did a great job when he took over that role in Justice League. Maybe Simmons is just perfect at everything.
18 TAIKA WAITITI
Taika Waititi took a Thor franchise that had underwhelmed for the first two movies and injected the life and pulse that made Thor: Ragnarok not only the best of the trilogy but possibly one of the best Thor movies that Marvel has made. In that movie, Waititi also took on a role as he voiced and motion captured the character of Korg.
However, what some Marvel fans might not realize is that this was not his first superhero movie -- as an actor. In 2011, Waititi was also in the DC Comics movie Green Lantern, where he portrayed Tom Kalmaku, Hal Jordan's best friend and the first person he comes to after getting his Power Ring.
17 NICOLE KIDMAN
In 2018, fans got to watch Nicole Kidman in Aquaman as the Queen of Atlantis as she fought multiple soldiers, taking them all down by herself with just her trident. She also somehow survived the creatures from the Trench and returned to help her son take the crown as the new King of Atlantis.
This movie came 13 years after Kidman played a major role in another DC Comics movie: Batman Forever. In this movie, she played Dr. Chase Meridian, the love interest for Val Kilmer's Bruce Wayne, although she only lasted for the one film before going the way of Vicki Vale and Catwoman/Selina Kyle before her.
16 AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON AND EVAN PETERS
In a two-for-one shot, one of the most ironic doublings in comic book history came from two actors who played best friends in the movie Kick-Ass. In that 2010 movie, Aaron Taylor-Johnson played Dave Lizewski, the kid who would become Kick-Ass. His best friend in the movie, Todd, was played by Evan Peters.
These two actors would both go on to play the exact same superhero in two different Marvel movies. Taylor-Johnson would play Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron, along with his sister the Scarlet Witch. Peters would have more success, as he played Quicksilver in both X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse as the son of Magneto.
15 MICHAEL KEATON
Many fans will still tell anyone who will listen that Michael Keaton was the best actor to ever play the role of Batman in movies. While Christian Bale, Ben Affleck and Adam West fans might disagree, there is no denying that Keaton left his mark on the Batman franchise that is still felt 30 years after his debut in the role.
28 years later, Keaton was a villain as he took on the role of The Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming. It was a very cool moment to see Keaton back in a superhero movie once again -- and strange seeing him on the wrong side of the law. In between, he also starred in Birdman, which was almost a metatextual critique of his Batman role (and also starred Amazing Spider-Man's Emma Stone as his daughter).
14 HALLE BERRY
Halle Berry has the distinction of winning an Oscar for Best Actress for her role in the movie Monster's Ball and then almost immediately following it up with the DC Comics movie Catwoman, which won her a Razzie for Worst Actress. It remains ranked as one of the worst superhero movies of all-time.
However, four years before Catwoman, Berry was one of the leads in the first major Marvel Comics superhero movie, The X-Men, as Storm. She appeared in the second and third movies, with Catwoman falling in between those releases. She later returned for X-Men: Days of Future Past and was also in the 2017 comic book movie Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
13 DOLPH LUNDGREN
Dolph Lundgren was the star in one of the very first theatrical Marvel movies ever made. Following in the footsteps of Howard the Duck in 1986, Dolph became the first man to ever portray Frank Castle on the big screen in the 1989 film, The Punisher. The movie was pretty much a generic '80s action flick but Lundgren really fit the role of a man set for revenge.
It took 29 years, but Lundgren made it back to a comic book movie when he took on the role of King Nereus in the 2018 DC Comics movie Aquaman. He was one of the allies of King Orm and the father of Mera in the film.
12 DOUG JONES
Doug Jones is one of the masters of motion capture acting and he has gotten the chance to play one of the most iconic superheroes in Marvel Comics history as well as one of the more unusual creatures in the pages of Hellboy. However, to be honest, his start came in the 1999 quirky superhero movie Mystery Man as Pencilhead.
Five years later, Jones took on the role of Abe Sapien in Hellboy and the followed it up in the sequel. In 2007, Jones got a chance to play one of the most popular Marvel Comics heroes of all time, the Silver Surfer. While the character was great, the movie disappointed most fans.
11 PETER DINKLAGE
Peter Dinklage has developed a monster fanbase thanks to his role of Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones. However, during his time on that TV show, he has kept busy in Hollywood as well and has two major superhero characters under his belt, both from Marvel Comics properties.
The first came in 2014 when Dinklage portrayed Dr. Bolivar Trask, the scientist in X-Men: Days of Future Past that wanted to create the Sentinels that might one day wipe out mutant-kind. Four years later, he was back in Marvel, this time in the MCU as Eitri, the dwarf that forged Stormbreaker for Thor in Avengers: Infinity War.