Chris Evans made his first appearance as Steve Rogers/Captain America in Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011, and no fan could have ever imagined any other actor in this role. While Rogers decided to retire from his superhero duties in a shocking turn of events in Avengers: Endgame, and Anthony Mackie is now the new Captain America, fans still consider Evans as the OG Captain America. But did you know that the actor was pretty scared of taking up the role?

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Chris Evan has almost given up his role as the superhero, until his mother convinced him not to do so. Spilling the beans on the same, Evans’ mom, Lisa Evans, told Esquire in 2020 that since the actor did not want to become “can’t-go-outside famous”, he wanted to reject the role.

“His biggest fear was losing his anonymity. He said, ‘I have a career now where I can do work I really like. I can walk my dog. Nobody bothers me. Nobody wants to talk to me. I can go wherever I want. And the idea of losing that is terrifying to me,’” she recalled.

“I said to him, ‘Look, you want to do acting work for the rest of your life? If you do this part, you will have the opportunity,'” she concluded.

While appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2016, Evans had also talked about why he did not want to take up the role initially. He revealed that he turned down the project “a few times” before finally saying yes because he was “scared.” He said that he had some social anxiety with this industry and hence he was hesitant in signing a nine-picture contract.

“In doing movies one at a time, if all of a sudden you decide you don’t want to do it anymore, you’re afforded the opportunity to take a step back and recalibrate. When you have a giant contract, if all of a sudden you’re not responding well? Too bad, you’ve got to suit up again. That was scary,” he added.

Chris Evans later realized that it was an amazing opportunity and decided to give a nod to the role. “I was saying no out of fear, really,” Evans said. “You can’t do anything out of fear. You can’t be doing something because you’re scared. It ended up kind of clicking to me in the way that whatever you’re scared of, push yourself into it,” he added.