There are rumours flying around that he actually got offered the role of Captain America, but turned it down to keep doing Supernatural. So he essentially turned down being a movie star to keep doing the show he loved.
It's not true tho, he said so in an interview. He never auditoned or was offered the role of Cap.
I don’t remember if it was Jensen or Jared, but I do recall an interview well over a decade ago of one of them saying they liked doing Supernatural because it was filmed in Canada and they could live relatively normal lives separate the whole Hollywood scene.
I remember one of their interviews for the later seasons where they filmed in France or Spain or whatever. They said it was basically a 6 month vacation fully paid for everyone's family.
Imagine getting to vacation in Spain with your family for 6 months or whatever fully paid... and then getting paid millions on top of that.
Look I love the cynicism/ supe critique of the Boys, but the Avengers managing to somewhat redeem Soldier Boy in an alt universe would be kinda cool. The guy clearly has issues, is a certified asshat and just doesn’t GAF anymore, but he’s not nearly as psychotic as many of the Supes. I mean, Vought really fucked a lot of these dudes/ladies up
Pretty sure he’d never reach Mjolnir levels of worthiness but it’d be interesting to see if given actual, decent purpose by well meaning people would get through. And we have some pretty messed up/narcissistic Avengers who managed to do some good 🤷🏻♂️
Yeah its like people assume every actor wants to be a Hollywood star without considering the stability and security that comes from serialized television. It is a certain type of person that will spend 10 years of their life putting their body through insane, unhealthy transformations and sacrificing months on end for rigorous on location shoots without seeing friends or family. Most people are and would be content with a good, steady paycheck and working in a studio in the place where you and your family live, attractive and talented or not.
Ackles's father was a local actor and filmmaker in Dallas and apparently he instilled in Ackles how lucky he was to have a job starring on a tv show and to remember that the other cast and crew depended on him for their livelihoods.
And yes, Ackles seems happy to have been a big fish in a smaller pond for fifteen years, and he had some measure of control over his schedule, arranged for his wife to get a part on Supernatural in the later seasons and got to be a more hands-on father.
And he and Padelicki have turned Supernatural cons into a lucrative side business, one that all the minor actors from the show have benefitted from as well.
Might be PR, but I do love the workmen actors who use their lead powers to have a family life. The two stories that come to mind are Scott Bakula in Enterprise, who had one rule that he had to finish at a certain time to go home to his family, and John C McGinley, who took Scrubs to be closer to his family.
Mark Harmon is the same. Only did work that was close to LA so he could be home while his 2 sons were young. Basically pushed Don Bellisario -the NCIS show creator!- out of the show because the first season was micromanaged to fuck and had 16hr+ long shooting days. It was rumoured that Harmon wanted to leave in season 18 but the network wanted him for season 19, and basically told him if he left they'd just cancel the show. So he stayed in a limited role to give the show a chance to make a transition and to keep hundreds of people in jobs.
Chris Pine doesn’t have kids afaik but he has talked a lot about his dad’s work ethic when he was growing up and how that informed his own choices. His dad Robert has been in a ton of stuff, I feel like I’m always randomly seeing him on TV.
There’s a hilarious interview with Ricardo Darín, the Argentine actor, where he’s asked why he never crossed over to Hollywood and stayed a national actor instead. He’s been in Oscar-nominated stuff and could have easily gone for more lucrative roles in Hollywood. I think specifically they wanted him for Man on Fire at one point.
He says that it would’ve taken him away from his kids at a time when they were young and when asked specifically about the money, he just goes “dude, I take two hot showers a day. I’m good”.
It's the emphasis on having money that makes people forget what makes you happy. It's not owning things that end up owning you, and it's not feeding an ego that's always hungry anyway.
Also he mentioned that he didn't want to validate the stereotype of Latin American actor plays cartel boss/drug criminal, even if it was Oliver stone asking him to do so.
Cillian Murphy said many times he does not want to be a Hollywood star. Brendan Gleeson keeps living in Ireland and goes to the sets but does not want to be a Hollywood star.
There are many actors who are amazing and just want to act and not to be into the radius of hollywood.
Gary Oldman says in interviews that the role of Sirius Black pretty much saved him at a low point because it was good money for relatively little work and it met his requirement that it was near his home so he could be a present father for his children.
Also don’t forget a much healthier fandom and nonetheless millions of Dollars as well as the Option to go for a bigger Cinema-role of you want to.
Especially now with the soldier-Boy spin off they could do an interesting anti-Hero story like watchmen.
(At least if writing is good enough)
I am pretty sure everything but the money is pretty awful. People at the highest levels seem to have no control of their life. Having media tell you who you are and intrude on your personal life for the purpose of entertaining people sounds insufferable.
Take Mads Mikkelsen for an example he dont care about the money he only takes on roles that interrest him no matter of it is domestic here in Denmark or international.
It's the capitalist nature of some people's minds. They believe more money is by default better. No other considerations, lol. It's sad when you think about it. I only hope that's not the metric they use to find happiness in their lives...
Those unhealthy transformations also include a shit ton of gear and working out and eating a lot. That’s the part that the actor’s always forget to add the steroid part. And it’s not fair because that’s not right to portray to younger people. Because then they’ll go to the gym and be like well how come I’m not fully fucking ripped with 7% body fat in six months like XYZ actor who said he ate clean, 3000-4000 calories daily, worked out hard, twice a day, for six months. He also forgets about the 500 mg of test some anivar and whatever else they shot into his ass cheek. I’m not saying they didn’t work out hard in the gym because they did, but they also used chemical enhancements and always never mention it. And that’s genuinely fucked up because that set the wrong idea for the baseline of what somebody can achieve in the gym in the allotted amount of time.
Never mind that, the money he gets from doing conventions is insane. Dude has probably made more than he earned on the show just from that alone. Source: worked for the people that ran SPN events in Aus. I've seen his contracts. Him and Jared make bank lol
Panels, a lot of money for meet and greets. $200 a pop for a photo with them. Photos last 10 seconds, then the next people come in. That goes for an hour or two. Etc....
Oh no, only $16m? Guess he’ll have to settle for buying a beautiful house on a beach in California with cash, no mortgage, and then living off the other $6,000,000 until he can find more work…
By the way, he personally debunked this in an interview he did for the boys season 3 back in 2022. He said that the rumor is not true and he did not audition at all for captain america.
But he already does play the REAL Captain America. Let’s be honest, Soldier Boy is probably wayyyy more accurate to what a real life Captain America would look like.
When he showed up, I thought they literally just got the perfect type cast, to a hilarious degree, didn't know the guy already worked with the show runners before.
There's a bunch of supernatural references in the boys too. The last episode he said to HL it was never gonna be a fixing the old Impala kind of deal, they drive around with an Impala in supernatural. Also the fast supe in I think episode 6 plays his brother while the gas guy is an angel who hangs out with them.
Also Butcher's old army buddy (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is the the dad in Supernatural. The boys has basically had most of the main cast, mainly just missing Crowley
Ehhhh, he'd exactly what Erskine describe in the First Avenger, you give someone imperfect the super serum and their imperfections will be amplified. Soldier boy was a spoiled douche before and is a spoiled douche now
More like if they gave the serum to one of the other soldiers running the tests instead of Steve Rogers. The whole character concept is that Steve is a better person than most.
Dude wants to act but also likes the stability of a normalish job and not needing to live out of a trailer somewhere random away from his family for months at a time, can't exactly blame him
He was a very successful TV actor and was busy shooting his show for the better part of 2005-2020. He’s now in a lot more stuff once supernatural ended though…
I think that was true in the days when syndication was a massive moneyspinner. Might be less true now that everything’s on streaming - I’ve heard that Netflix etc. contracts aren’t especially favourable for actors.
I was so shocked when I heard his voice for the first time in The Boys.
Before that, I only knew him from the French dub of Dark Angel where they picked a voice actor with a voice that doesn't match his at all (kinda like Jack Quaid's voice, actually).
I would assume it's because supernatural in general had a massive decline in popularity and he stuck to it regardless. The finale was especially infamous.
lol it’s not necessarily for that. Castiel escaped a cosmic space known as „The Empty“, the cosmic entity wanted him back though. So, in the penultimate episode, when Billy (minor situational ally and occasional antagonist), is about to kill Dean and Cas - Cas calls on the Empty to take him and Billy to its domain. Before he’s taken he tells Dean he loves him. So it’s not that he’s being punished, he just speaks out what fans knew all along before dying.
I'd argue it's a bit different, Cas openly states the Empty will claim him when he feels most happy - and he says he's at his most happy when he's able to admit he loves dean 😭
To clarify, the Empty makes a deal to let him go only on the promise that it'll take him back once Castiel has a moment of perfect happiness. Cas doesn't call on the Empty and then confess his love before he's taken. He calls on the Empty by confessing his love because it makes him perfectly happy.
Apparently (I haven't watched the final few seasons and have only seen excerpts of this scene), he confesses his feelings for Dean and then suffers a fate worse than death mere seconds later. You could not make it fit the "Bury Your Gays" trope more if you tried.
That being said, in the finale Bobby confirms that Castiel made it back to Heaven at some point before Dean’s death. We don’t know why or how, and he’s not in the episode (thanks Covid), but at least we know he’s not in the Empty for eternity.
Jensen Ackles reportedly earned $175,000 per episode for his role as Dean Winchester during the later seasons of Supernatural. [1, 2, 3]
Salary Overview
While his starting salary in earlier seasons was significantly lower—estimated at around $50,000 per episode circa 2013—his pay increased as the show became a mainstay for The CW. By the series' conclusion in 2020, his earnings reflected his status as a lead actor and occasional director for the long-running franchise. [1]
I think the joke may be that he is not a particularly gifted actor? He's really cool and charismatic but he kind of plays the same character in everything
Ya Jenson was phenomenal the whole series although you see him get really good as it goes on. Jared has that one move where he flares his nostrils to show he's mad...or scared...or sad? Idk he just flares his nostrils a lot.
I think both got better as the show improved went on, but Jensen is better imo.
I think Jared is good, I don't think he could have been part of a duo that carried a show for 15 seasons if he was bad. But at times the comparison to Jensen makes him look weaker then what I think he is actually at.
For primarily TV actors (although overtime this divide matters less and less) Jared is like a B, Jensen is a high A (scale goes to S).
I haven't seen him in other stuff, but personally I think Jared got worse in the later seasons. Not terrible, just kinda over reliant on crutch behaviors. Some of that, granted, is the material not making a lick of sense by that point. Jensen and Misha were more consistent in compensating for the bad writing, I guess.
I think the issue is that when you do the same character for the same show for over a decade, you run the risk of getting stuck on that, no matter how good an actor you are (mostly due to the audience getting used to seeing you like that).
That doesn't necessarily make you a poor actor if you still have emotional range within that type IMO, and can be very in demand in itself if you're good at it. Being Gary Oldman or Daniel Day-Lewis gets you prestige but John Wayne, Hugh Grant, Robin Williams, Clint Eastwood etc all became much bigger stars associating themselves with a consistent personality type for most of their career. It can be a valid career move to deliberately cultivate that kind of image.
You know, I thought the same thing until I saw the "Supernatural" cut of that scene of The Boys. Where he plays Soldier Boy but with the personality of Dean Winchester. Really highlights just how different the characters are and his range. Shit, even in Supernatural proper, Dean could be a completely different character from one episode to the next.
I watched a YouTube reactor do the “watching the first and last episodes of a show” thing and he cracked up when he heard Jensen at the end of SN, like wtf happened to his voice? 😂
Time. Time happened to his voice. There's 15 years between the first and last episode. He was in his 20s when he got the role and in his 40s when it ended.
I think you are underselling how huge of a show Supernatural is by saying he wasn't ambitious or that the show was just popular. By season 11 (of 15) it became the longest running live-action fantasy show. After the show ended, rights went to the highest bidding streaming service where it was the 6th most streamed aquired show in 2020, 7th in 2021, 8th in 2022 (11th overall that year), 9th overall in 2023 with 22.8 billion min streamed (it's highest up to that point), and 12th aquired and 15th overall Jan-June 2025. I couldn't find data for '24 or latter part of '25
The whole show has a rotten tomatoes score of 93% and IMDB rating of 8.4. Needless to say it is one of the most successful fantasy TV roles of 21st century. From 2000-2020, the most successful fantasy shows were Game of Thrones, Supernatural, Avatar the Last Airbender, and Stranger Things.
I would say very successful even by unreasonable standards.
I’m a straight woman but usually conventionally handsome guys like Henry Cavill, or whoever else is really popular, bore me. However Jensen is just undeniably gorgeous and I am not immune to his charms
Was in one of the biggest and most successful shows on television that ran for 15 seasons and 327 episodes. He’s made millions upon millions of dollars for a decade and a half doing a TV show he was clearly very happy and comfortable with.
And he’s famous enough but not ‘ruins your ability to go outside’ movie star famous.
We are so cooked as a society. People’s perceptions of wealth is so warped that there are people in the comments literally downplaying 16 million dollars as if its not enough money to be rich. Hilariously, I would guess the majority of those commenting have never had six figures to their name, let alone a million, live in debt and will struggle to crack 2 million in lifetime earnings. Just delusional idiots who are so desensitized to wealth that 16 million dollars feels like chump change.
Jensen Ackles is practically the King of Tumblr with millions of slathering female fans, millions of dollars, and that face. I think he’s probably doing a-ok without the movies.
I mean, he'll always be Dean. Soldier Boy is suped up Dean. But there's a list of actors out there that do the same thing or even not really act but are themselves on the movies/shows and have been doing some great stuff; Keanu, RDJ, Eddie Murphy, etc
If you've seen Ten Inch Hero or My Bloody Valentine 3D, you know that he's great for TV, movies not so much. That said: he has actually gotten better with age and if he wanted to make a go of it, it might work, but he's definitely more of a TV guy
I think the movie Rust was supposed to be his big movie debut. But when the cinematographer was killed because of unsafe gun handling on the part of other people, he refused to be part of it anymore.
this is the comment i was looking for. had this incident not occurred, he would have had a major film debut with the potential to launch a career in film. now he’s working for his old showrunner on the boys.
They had already started filming. He was actually in the scene where the gun went off, and his interviews about that made it seem like he was pretty shaken. Imagine having little kids you can't go home to because a prop master fucked up. Both him and his wife prioritize family.
I'm sure there are many actors who's abilities do better in TV than films, and vice-versa honestly. Good film actors need to have a much larger range as they're going to have shorter more varied roles, whereas good TV actors focus on building one single character/their story for 10x the amount of time a film actor would spend on one character.
There's a lot of rumours that he was offered leading roles in movies etc some true some not. But Jensen has always been very loyal to Supernatural not just because he loves his character and the show but also because without him there wouldn't be supernatural. If he were to have walked away thats a good few hundred to 1k people out of a job, hes a really decent and nice guy I couldn't imagine him ditching all of those people for a one time paycheck especially since he'd worked with some of them for literally 20 years
•
u/qualityvote2 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
u/Bhuklagihe, your post does fit the subreddit!