Captain America Comes Home After a Decade Playing the Patriotic Superhero, Chris Evans Is Laying Down His Shield and Heading Back to His Massachusetts Hometown
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CAPTAIN AMERICA COMES HOME AFTER A DECADE PLAYING THE PATRIOTIC SUPERHERO, CHRIS EVANS IS LAYING DOWN HIS SHIELD AND HEADING BACK TO HIS MASSACHUSETTS HOMETOWN. WHAT’S NEXT? by JESSE WILL • photographs by MILLER MOBLEY Academy Awards, presenting with Jenni- The micro-drama was caught on camera; think comment on his character’s fate. “You can’t “There was no reason that after 10 years of fer Lopez in front of a TV audience of more pieces on chivalry hit the internet the next day. ask me that!” he says. Actors playing Marvel making movies, I was freaking out the way I than 29 million. His duds that night: a cus- Evans says his phone only recently stopped roles apparently get castigated—vaporized?— was,” he says. “I started to entertain the possi- tom baby-blue velvet Ferragamo jacket that vibrating with texts from friends and family if they leak plot points, and Evans wants to bility that maybe this wasn’t the right industry his stylist told The Hollywood Reporter was who caught it. “The bar is so low that literally I avoid that, in part because he’d like to direct for me. I started to think, Am I getting closer inspired by Prince Charming. did a normal thing, like on par with saying ‘God one of the studio’s titles one day. to the person I’m supposed to be—or further? I Evans ushers me inside, where the dish- bless you’ when somebody sneezes, and people Assuming the rumors of Rogers’ demise started to feel like maybe I was getting further.” washer is running and congressional hear- thought it was—I don’t know,” he says. are true—Evans himself tweeted “thanks, it’s Evans was preparing to do the noble work ings are playing on cable news, and Dodger, Spend some time with Chris Evans and you been an honor” to the cast, crew, and audience of reclaiming his life. He’d step away from the Evans’ rescue dog, is spinning around like a start to understand that Chris Evans doesn’t when reshoots on Endgame ended last Octo- movies. Chuck it all. Do something different. dervish, because maybe no one’s come over drink the Chris Evans Kool-Aid. The actor ber—Evans’ send-off from the Marvel fran- But then Marvel called, offering the role of in a while. The scene is not quite what you could certainly steep in celebrity in L.A., but chise should be well attended. Last spring’s Captain America. A nine-film deal, no audi- expect when you’re visiting an actor who he’d rather be back east, back home, where Avengers: Infinity War had the best U.S. and tion necessary. It was an actor’s dream in terms plays a Marvel superhero. It’s more like visit- instead of paparazzi, he’s seen by deer and global box office debut of all time; Endgame of f inancial security. But Evans said no. Then a ing a successful but reclusive novelist. Or your dogs and maybe a few retirees on their daily will likely eclipse it, with expectations of a few friends told him he was crazy, that he was parents’ suburban home. workouts, slogging down the road in sweats. near $300 million opening weekend. Collec- just being scared, retreating. Evans listened, RURAL MASSACHUSETTS SEEMS A BILLION I ask about the Oscars and J. Lo, and Evans Where on the weekends, his old friends like to tively, the nine Marvel movies Evans has acted then started to see the offer as a sign from miles removed from where you’d imagine a reveals his contemporaneous monologue: tell him that he’s a shitty actor, and he’s per- in have made $9,256,566,189 at the box office, the universe. He talked Marvel down to a six- Hollywood superstar would want to spend “She’s been a major crush of mine for so long,” fectly cool with that. but who’s counting. Needless to say, Evans movie contract, then took the deal. (He still did the waning days of winter. The trees are bare, he says. “I was just thinking, Don’t be annoy- has played a major part in the Franchise That nine films.) “I got the job in a weird way from refrozen slush piles reach head high, and even ing, don’t be annoying, shut up Chris, just shut OF COURSE, EVANS HAS THE LUXURY OF Saved Hollywood. saying no,” he says. “Just like other things in in the midafternoon, there’s a kind of dull up. Don’t be a dickhead. Don’t say anything, relaxing far from the West Coast hustle in part Funny to think that he almost didn’t take life, when you say no, they just pursue you.” gloaming. Wouldn’t you rather be in Santa because you don’t know what to say.” because his character has been a lodestar in the the gig. Still, Evans describes the experience of Monica, or St. Lucia? Not that you’d notice he was anything but most lucrative franchise in f ilm history (yes, Evans explains that in 2010, he was in shooting the original film, Captain America: Yet here’s Captain America, Chris Evans, cool at the Oscars. A Chris Evans moment went even more so than Star Wars). Since 2010, Houston shooting the low-budget film Punc- The First Avenger, as a “hair-on-fire fever he of the signature square jaw and brooding viral when, seated in the front row, he quickly Evans has played Steve Rogers, or Captain ture, a ripped-from-the-headlines drama about dream.” He felt, he recalls, like a cat being visage, breathing in the damp afternoon air leaped to the aid of actress Regina King when America, the stars-and-stripes-clad, shield- a drug-addicted lawyer taking on a medical- tossed into a bathtub. Captain America, on his stoop as he ushers me into his home, her dress became tangled as she approached the wielding supersoldier and steadfast leader of a device company. By this point, Evans had after all, is not exactly an easy character to a heavily renovated farmhouse on a couple of stage. Evans supported King as she straight- team of Hollywood’s hottest superheroes. The acted in plenty of films, with starring roles play—especially when you’re following in the snow-covered acres outside Boston. “Yeah, I ened it out, then escorted her up a few stairs. latest installment in the series, Avengers: End- in action flicks and rom-coms since making footsteps of Robert Downey Jr.’s electric, char- guess this is the part of the year where you, game, opens April 26 and ends this particular his major-movie debut in 2001’s Not Another ismatic Iron Man. “Marvel had this hope of a you know, question why you live here,” he chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or Teen Movie. But for some reason, in Houston tapestry of characters,” Evans says. “It really admits, laughing as he surveys the scene. MCU, in geekspeak). Apparently, it’s Evans’ he was starting to lose it. He was having panic doesn’t work if one of them falls flat on his face.” But Evans, 37, loves it here. He grew up last go as Cap: Rumor has it that this time attacks, melting down between takes. He’d Based on a character that first appeared in just a few miles away and even now, nearly a around, Steve Rogers bites the dust. long expressed frustration with the dancing- World War II–era comic books, Rogers starts decade after picking up the shield of Captain PREVIOUS SPREAD: EVANS WEARS LEVI’S DENIM JACKET, BRUNELLO CUCINELLI VINTAGET-SHIRT, LEVI’S JEANS, IWC WATCH. Lounging on the couch, feet up on a monkey aspect of actorhood, but had learned as a weakling with a fighting spirit who gets America, looks every bit the local in a Red distressed-wood coffee table, Evans won’t to glad-hand the press without losing his mind, injected with a serum that turns him into the Sox ball cap, a red tartan flannel, and chuk- and seemed to be getting better at faking it supersoldier. He’s kind of the moral compass kas. It’s hard to reckon that just a couple of through step and repeats on the red carpet. But of the MCU, a bit of a throwback, and, well, days before, this same guy was onstage at the for the first time, Evans’ anxiety was getting pretty corny. “Downey’s character is obvi- the better of him on set, a place he had always ously the crown jewel, constantly making considered cathartic, therapeutic. mistakes and finding redemption,” Evans WHEN YOU PLAY A CHARACTER FOR A LONG TIME, YOU START TO LOOK AT YOUR OWN CONFLICTS THROUGH THE EYES OF SOMEONE WHO MIGHT HANDLE IT BETTER THAN YOU WOULD.” 055 says. “Cap is the steady hand on the wheel.” home to me. I have no desire to lay down roots inspires the theoretical Marxist in all of us.” Joe Russo, who along with his brother somewhere else.” Evans attributes his pointed political Anthony has directed Evans in four Mar- This is not all to say that Evans spends statements to Trump’s rise. “I wasn’t like vel movies, including Endgame, calls Cap- all his downtime holed up in the woods, that before he came around, to be honest,” tain America “one of the most difficult roles refusing to engage the outside world. He’s he says. But politics is far from his only pas- you could possibly ask an actor to play.” The built one of Hollywood’s must-read Twitter sion.