Chris Evans: If you were dorky & awkward at the age of 10, youll always feel that way
I’ve never thought “why is Chris Evans with Jenny Slate?” should be a question about their separate attractiveness levels. On a superficial level, he’s the good-looking guy next door and she’s the attractive girl-next-door type too. But people lost their minds over the idea that Captain America would end with a girlfriend who wasn’t, like, a supermodel. To me, the better question is “why is Chris Evans with Jenny Slate when she seems like such a neurotic mess, and she was married at the time?” The answer could be that Chris is just as much of a neurotic mess and he and Jenny are pretty similar in their self-described “dorkiness.” Chris did an interview with the Thirst Aid Kit podcast (you can hear it here) and he talked about whether he thinks he’s hot, and how inside his Captain America buff body, he’s just a dork. Some highlights:
When asked “when did you realize you were hot?”: “Oh, man! Goodness…I still feel like I’m just trying to pull a fast one over on people. You don’t know what I look like first thing in the morning! It’s rough!…If you look back on some of my photos from childhood, it was not kind. I had a really bumpy road, and I think like most of us, we still feel like that—no matter what. No matter what happens, we kind of connect to that chapter in life when you first start exploring the feelings of comparison. It’s usually connected to when you start noticing the people you’re attracted to—somewhere around 9, 10, 11—when you first start coming into your own sexuality and start seeing how you stack up. That was probably one of the roughest chapters of my life! And so I think—for most people—you kind of stay in that suspended state.”
He was always typecast as the all-American jock though: “I guess when I got to Hollywood, and you start going on certain auditions, you’re like, ‘All right. Typically I’m playing a guy in a letterman jacket. I guess I fit a certain character type. But like I said, that is not how I feel on the inside. I’m a pretty big dork. God, everybody says they’re a dork! That’s a stupid thing to say; I shouldn’t have said it. But I really do have dorky tendencies. So, I don’t know. I suppose right when I started auditioning and you see the pattern of things you’re going out for, you go, ‘All right, I guess this is the role I fit into.'”
He’s pro-beard: “I really like it, too; I usually live my life with a beard. I’m not a huge fan of shaving and it provides a little bit of anonymity at times.. I think I can get a pretty full beard in a month—three to four weeks… I’ve had multiple people try to push some sort of beard oil on me. Who is lubing up their beard? That’s just gross to me. No, it really is no grooming. You comb it in the morning so you don’t have that behead look. There’s really not much grooming to it.”
He’s looking forward to the end of his Marvel contract: “It sounds so awful to say it, but, you know, I’m 36. We started these movies, what, eight years ago? Nine years ago? Something like that. So, over the years, your body goes into a little bit of wear and tear, not only to get in shape for the film, but then the actual filming. It’s a lot of stunt work. You get banged up and you never want to completely fall off. When you wrap the film—even though you stop going to the gym—in less than six or seven months, you’re going to be starting another film. So, you always have to keep some sort of a foundation. I really wouldn’t mind just…not quitting the gym completely, but adjusting my workout to fit a 36-year-old body and not try to carry around so much size. Be more functional, I suppose.”
My instinct was to roll my eyes at the traditionally handsome white guy who doesn’t understand that he’s hot. But I actually halfway believe it in Chris’s case. I think he really does have that kind of stunted, stuck-in-middle-school view of himself. I think Jenny Slate does too, which brings me back to the point I was making in the opening: maybe Slate and Evans are sort of meant for each other. He is her “dream seventh grade boyfriend” and he’s stuck in the seventh-grade frame of mind. It works.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Getty.
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