Brandon Routh: 'Superman is Christ-like'

Moments before our interview, Brandon Routh is in need of a bathroom break. When he emerges, I'm half expecting him to pull open his shirt to reveal a red "S" on his chest - the ideal way to announce his arrival as the new Superman. But rather at odds with the five-star Los Angeles hotel room where we meet, Routh, in jeans and a grey top, is not one for grand entrances. Some 19 years since DC Comics' Man of Steel last flew across our screens, he knows that taking the lead in Superman Returns says it all.

While stars from Nicolas Cage to Jude Law have all been considered to revive the character, none quite feel as right as the unknown Routh. Boasting a complexion clearer than the bottled mineral water he's holding, were I not in the same room, I'd be tempted to believe his appearance on screen is computer-generated. Everything about him - the muscular 6ft 3in frame, chiselled jaw, deep brown eyes - appears to have been sculpted to perfection.

Or as the film's director, Bryan Singer, notes, "He looks like he walked off a page in the comic book." With only a handful of minor television credits to his name, it's almost as if the 26 year-old has been waiting to make his screen debut until Superman was ready to return.

It doesn't hurt that Routh looks uncannily like his late predecessor, Christopher Reeve, who turned the character from a comic-book cult into a global phenomenon in four movie outings. While being announced as the new Superman a week after Reeve's death in October 2004 cannot have been easy, Routh's casting feels like a tribute to the legacy of the actor, who became a real-life hero for millions after a riding accident left him paralysed.

Born a year after the original Superman film was released, it's the fact that Routh was raised during Reeve's tenure that helps make his performance as Superman so eerie. Relying on more than just a coincidental physical resemblance, while it transcends mere impersonation, his is a dignified turn deliberately informed by his forebear's work. As Sam Huntington, who plays Daily Planet photographer Jimmy Olsen in the new film, notes: "Brandon channelled Christopher Reeve for this film. The way he speaks, the way he is, the way he looks even - it's startling. It's just enough like Chris Reeve and just enough not like him, so people will be nostalgic but also will say this is a new generation and a new guy."

While the plot sees Superman return to Metropolis after a five-year absence to find life has moved on, including his one-time paramour, Lois Lane, who now has a son and a new boyfriend, rather than reinvent the character, it required Routh to simply remind us of him.

This came naturally enough. It's as if he's been groomed since birth - from being photographed as a baby in Superman pyjamas to dressing up for Hallowe'en as the character a year before he won the role.

"I think that, at an early age, I was touched by Superman," he says. "I think all young kids were. When I saw the film the first time, when I was five, I was so sick I gave myself a migraine and barely saw it. So I was greatly influenced as a child. I didn't read the comics, but I think that the spirit of Superman was always with me." If his resemblance to and passion for the character wasn't enough, Routh's background also feels like a blueprint to play Superman. Born in Iowa, Routh grew up in Norwalk, 100 miles from Woolstock, the hometown of George Reeves, who played Superman on TV in the 1950s.

"Growing up in a small town, life is more relaxed and you can become more open," he says. While, unlike Superman, he was not adopted, an only child or raised on a farm, he concedes that "there are certain things that are the same" in their upbringings. Namely, what he calls Mid-West values: "I'm not really sure what they are, except that we're taught to treat everybody with respect and be kind to our neighbours."

"I think we're not alone," he tells me. "I believe there's a power greater than us." With Singer's film implying that Superman undergoes a resurrection of sorts, it furthers the analogy that the Man of Steel is also a Man of God. "I would say it's a pretty accurate comparison," he says. "Superman is very Christ-like. There are so many things that point to it being that way. He doesn't care who you are, what you look like or what you believe, he'll help you."

In reality, Routh is more like Superman's earth-bound alter ego Clark Kent than his superhero persona. "Clark comes naturally to him because he is Clark," says Superman Returns screenwriter Michael Dougherty. Routh doesn't deny the comparison. "I was more Clark Kent for sure," he says. "I didn't have a lot of friends growing up."

But he notes, "It was only when I went to college that the girls paid more attention." Now, after toiling away in shows like Will and Grace and Gilmore Girls, Routh has the opposite problem. He says he's ready for a surfeit of female attention.

He lives in Los Angeles with his actress-girlfriend Courtney Ford. Ironically, Routh has starred with Ford in a short she produced called Denial, dealing with the crumbling of a perfect relationship, though he maintains she won't be jealous of his fame. "She might be proud that she's the one that gets to be with me," he reasons.

Routh has already felt the full force of the rumour mill - from the notion that he was forced to strap down his "super bulge" so the film's rating would remain family-friendly, to the suggestion that he is gay. As the now-defunct US magazine Radar opined, with Routh cast by the openly gay Singer, the actor would be coming out in the lead-up to the movie's release. "Bryan said I should be aware that things like that would be said because of his openness," says Routh. "People want to sell papers."

Then there is the notion that he will fall foul of the so-called curse that has afflicted numerous past actors from the films and TV shows - from the unsolved death by gun-shot of George Reeves to the mental breakdown of former Lois Lane actress Margot Kidder.

"I don't really believe in the curse," Routh says. "That's a journalist type thing and I don't live my life out of fear, and there are a lot worse things than being this character." Contracted to do a sequel if his Superman succeeds, Routh claims he's not scared of being typecast, as Christopher Reeve was.

"I trust in my talent as an actor that I can become other characters," he notes. But he admits he could conceive of playing the role for ever. "That's part of the deal until somebody comes on and does it differently. Whatever it entails I suppose I am ready for it."

'Superman Returns' opens on 14 July