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Cast list

Captain Marvel Cast: The Full List of Actors, Their Roles and Who Was Nearly Cast

EXT. CAPTAIN MARVEL — NIGHT

The full Captain Marvel cast list

The Captain Marvel cast is unusually easy to summarise and unusually easy to get wrong, because several of its performers play more than one thing and two of them appear as digitally younger versions of characters audiences already knew.

The table above is the complete billed list in order. What is worth adding is which of those credits are doing something a flat captain marvel cast table hides.

The actors carrying more than one role

Three entries in the cast of Captain Marvel are not a straightforward one-actor-one-character pairing:

  • Annette Bening plays Mar-Vell and the Supreme Intelligence. The second is an entity that appears as whoever it is speaking to, so casting one actor for both is the mechanism, not a doubling-up.
  • Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg appear digitally de-aged, because the film is set in 1995. Jackson still has both eyes here, and the film explains how that changes.
  • Mckenna Grace plays the young Carol Danvers in flashback, which is why Brie Larson is not the only performer credited with the role.

Among the other captain marvel actors, two are worth flagging for anyone tracing performers across films: Djimon Hounsou plays Korath here and also appears in The King’s Man as Shola, and Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau went on to a substantially larger profile afterwards.

The casting that was speculated about first

In 2016 the part was still unfilled and the public conversation was a shortlist. Brie Larson was cast, and no other actor was ever attached to the role.

That is worth stating plainly because casting speculation has a way of hardening into false memory. Emily Blunt was among the names discussed and was never cast in the part; she has spoken since about how persistently superhero casting rumours attached to her during that period. Nothing in the public record ever put her in the film.

The pattern repeats across this reference: a film in development attracts confident-sounding reports, and the ones that turn out to be wrong do not get retracted as loudly as they were published. A list of captain marvel actors assembled from 2016 coverage would be almost entirely incorrect.

Where the full list ends and the tail begins

Structured film data holds fifty-seven credits for this film, of which the table above covers the billed cast. The remainder are minor and uncredited parts.

That is a much deeper credit list than most films in this reference — Jumanji: The Next Level has thirteen recorded credits, Dodgeball twenty-eight — and it reflects a production scale rather than a larger ensemble. A studio film of this size credits stunt performers, motion-capture performers and single-scene roles that a mid-budget comedy simply does not have.

Anyone comparing one film’s captain marvel cast total against another’s should read those numbers as a measure of production accounting, not of how many people are actually in the film.

Full cast list

Captain Marvel (2019) · directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck · Marvel Studios

Billed cast of Captain Marvel, in billing order (Wikipedia cast section, cross-checked against Wikidata P161)
# Actor Role
1 Brie Larson Carol Danvers
2 Samuel L. Jackson Nick Fury
3 Ben Mendelsohn Talos
4 Jude Law Yon-Rogg
5 Annette Bening Mar-Vell / the Supreme Intelligence
6 Djimon Hounsou Korath
7 Lee Pace Ronan
8 Lashana Lynch Maria Rambeau
9 Gemma Chan Minn-Erva
10 Clark Gregg Phil Coulson
11 Rune Temte Bron-Char
12 Algenis Perez Soto Att-Lass
13 Mckenna Grace the young Carol Danvers
14 Akira Akbar Monica Rambeau

Cast in billing order (Wikipedia cast section, cross-checked against Wikidata P161). 57 credits exist in structured data for this film, including minor and uncredited parts not listed above.

Questions about Captain Marvel

Who is in the Captain Marvel cast?

Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Ben Mendelsohn as Talos, Jude Law as Yon-Rogg and Annette Bening as Mar-Vell, with Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan and Clark Gregg. The full billed list is in the table above.

Was Emily Blunt ever cast as Captain Marvel?

No. Blunt was one of several names discussed publicly before the role was filled, and she has spoken about superhero casting rumours attaching to her repeatedly. Brie Larson was cast, and no other actor was ever announced for the part.

Who plays the young Carol Danvers?

Mckenna Grace, in the flashback sequences. Brie Larson plays the adult Carol Danvers throughout the present-day story.

Who does Annette Bening play?

Two connected roles. Mar-Vell, the Kree scientist, and the Supreme Intelligence, which takes the appearance of whoever it addresses. It is the same performer in both, which is the point of the casting.

Is Samuel L. Jackson digitally de-aged?

Yes. The film is set in 1995, so both Jackson as Nick Fury and Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson appear as their younger selves. Jackson has both eyes, which is a plot point rather than an oversight.

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