Stuart Townsend is an oddly enigmatic actor. For years now he seems to have been poised for big things, but it’s never happened, and it’s difficult to know whether that’s because he’s foolish, unlucky or just not that interested in becoming a major star and so ends up accidentally sabotaging his big opportunities.
When he has made major movies, like The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Queen Of The Damned, they’ve flopped, while he’s also famous for having left the role of Aragorn in Lord Of The Rings after a few days shooting, due to ‘creative differences’ with Peter Jackson (reports differ on whether he resigned or got fired).
Now comes news (via the AP) that despite it having been announced that Townsend would be playing the role of Fandral in the upcoming Marvel movie, Thor, it appears he’s bailed on the production, with the official reason once more being ‘creative differences’.
Although there’s been no official word, AICN says Townsend was pretty much fired from Thor after turning up six hours late to a screen test. As Townsend apparently has a reputation for bad timekeeping and being tricky to work with, it seems that this was enough for the production to look elsewhere for their Fandral. They’ve now settled on relative newcomer Joshua Dallas, who appeared in The Descent: Part 2 and will be in George Lucas’ upcoming WWII air force drama, Red Tails. Filming on Thor begins next week.
Although it’s yet another big role that isn’t going to work out for Townsend, we’re sure consoling himself in the arms of fiancee Charlize Theron will help.