James Marsden: Alway Engaged, Never a Groom

James Marsden has made a career out of playing suffering fiances.

What is it about James Marsden that gets him cast in movie roles in which he never gets the girl? He often plays the likable boyfriend but not the true love. In an interview with Scott Hollerman for boxofficemojo.com, Marsden said that as a kid, “I wanted to be Han Solo—I wanted to be Luke Skywalker, too—but there was something about the roguish, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants guy and his wry sense of humor.” He would, however, end up playing plenty of Luke Skywalker roles, romantically speaking, and not the roguish hero who ends up with the girl.

Marsden’s acting career started on television in guest spots on such shows as The Nanny, Blossom and Ally McBeal. He had a starring role on the short lived and ill conceived series Second Noah, playing a young single father.

His first international success was as Cyclops/Scott Summers in the X-Men movie series. In it, he plays the leader of the superhero group who is in love with fellow X-Men, Jean Grey, Famke Jansen. Jean, meanwhile, has the hots for Wolverine. Although the series spends more time on trying to create sexual tension between Jean and Wolverine, it is Cyclops emotional farewell to Jean in X-Men 2: X-Men United that is the most heartfelt scene in the entire series. Even though Scott and Jean live together, Jean and Wolverine share the hottest love scene in the movie and to make matters even worse, Jean obliterates Scott in X-Men 3: The Last Stand.

In the film adaptation of Nicholas Spark’s The Notebook, Marsden plays a man engaged to a woman who secretly pines for an old flame. Marsden’s Lon is a successful businessman and World War II veteran. Lon is first and foremost a nice guy who appears on film to have few flaws, but in the world of romantic movies, nice is not the same as passion and Marsden’s character loses out again.

In Heights, Marsden again plays a fiancé engaged to Isobel, played by Elizabeth Banks. The twist here is that Marsden’s character is the one who has passion for another person. In this case it is with another man, Alec, played by Jesse Bradford. Marsden’s character ends up with neither his fiancé or his lover.

Now starring in Superman Returns, Marsden finds himself playing a very familiar character, or as he described it to Dennis Hensley of The Advocate in May 2005, “I'm playing Lois Lane's fiancé. It's basically The Notebook all over again. [Laughs] No, actually it's very different. It's very, very cool.” In the film, Marsden plays Richard, who has been engaged to Lois for a long time and believes he is the father of their 5 year old son. As the movie ends they are still engaged but Lois is, of course, still carrying a torch for the man of steel.

In movies, Marsden constantly plays broken hearted characters, but in real life he has been married to wife Lisa since 2000. They have a son born in 2001 and a daughter born last summer in the midst of Marsden filming Superman Returns and X-Men 3: The Last Stand.

Marsden has several movies in the can, The Alibi and 10th and Wolf due out this year. He is currently finishing work on the Walt Disney fantasy film Enchanted, in which Marsden plays a prince and even gets to sing. It does, however, remain to be seen if he actually ends up with the girl in any of these movies.