Sad reason Chris Evans tried to turn down Captain America role

Chris Evans became a household name playing Captain America – but when he was first approached about the role, he repeatedly turned it down.

Even superheroes can struggle from time to time.

While he might seem like a paragon of confidence on screen, Captain America actor Chris Evans reportedly rejected the star-making role several times due to debilitating panic attacks.

“All of a sudden your hobby becomes your job,” Evans, 38, told the Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast of struggling to cope with his meteoric rise. “Anxiety comes with that.”

The Captain America star has opened up about his struggle with anxiety.

As a result, the Avengers star repeatedly turned down the opportunity to try out for the part of Steve Rogers in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, despite a proposed salary increase and an offer to cut his daunting nine-film contract to six flicks.

“My suffering would be my own,” explained Evans, who worried that the prominent movie role would cause his anxiety to spike. He also feared how he would be viewed on social media as it was “during the proliferation of the internet age where all of a sudden you can read people’s reactions online”.

He was worried about the impact the sudden global exposure would have on his mental health.

His battles with anxiety reportedly began in 2010 while shooting indie film Puncture .

“It was the best decision I’ve ever made,” said Evans, who also played Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, in Marvel’s critically panned 2005 flick Fantastic Four and its 2007 sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

And he was able to conquer the panic attacks before they became an issue. “To be honest,” he said, “all the things that I was fearing never really came to fruition.”

This article originally appeared in the NY Post and was reproduced with permission