Between 1993 and 1997, actor Dean Cain was better known as Superman. He starred on Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman alongside Teri Hatcher‘s Lois Lane. Hatcher’s career took off after the series; though Cain has done dozens of small roles in film and television, he was not so lucky professionally. And now, at the age of 59, he has apparently decided to switch vocations. Shortly after the release of James Gunn‘s Superman, Caine says he has become one more of his friend Donald Trump‘s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Cain apparently didn’t need to see Gunn’s film to express his disdain for it. While promoting the movie, Gunn told the Sunday Times that Superman is “the story of America—an immigrant that came from other places and populated the country.” He added that the character’s origin “is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value, and is something we have lost.” Cain feared this would make Superman “all woke and crazy,” though he later told Variety that he had not seen the film. Among his criticisms, Cain said that it was provocative to highlight Superman’s immigrant status as ICE, the armed wing of Trump’s anti-immigration policy, engage in frequent high-profile raids. The president has strengthened the service to become the most well-funded federal agency. Now, one of those agents will be Cain.
Cain originally became an actor by accident. He is the son of an actress (Sharon Thomas, who appeared in an episode of Lois and Clark) and the adopted son of a director Christopher Cain; as a child, he was friends people like Chris Penn ( Sean‘s brother), Charlie Sheen, and Rob Lowe. As an adolescent, he spent four years dating Brooke Shields. But what Cain was really good at was sports. He briefly played professional football with the Buffalo Bills—until he was injured during one of his first practices. After that, he dabbled in film work, more romances (with the likes of Pamela Anderson), and eventually won the role of Superman after beating out another conservative actor whose career has since faltered, Kevin Sorbo.
As Hatcher further made a name for herself on Desperate Housewives and Cain was increasingly relegated to episodic roles, he gradually became known more for his conservative politics than for his onscreen work. For years—since before Trump, with whom he has a decades-long friendship—Cain has spoken about his Republican affiliation. In recent times, he’s used his social networks and appearances on Fox News to amplify Trump’s messages. Now, it seems, Cain is taking an entirely different path. Gunn, perhaps, saw something like this coming. In that same Times interview, he reiterated that his Superman, he reiterated, is “about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.”
Original story in VF Spain.
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