This Is Why You Recognize The Cast Of Captain Marvel

A few early hiccups aside, Marvel's casting game has been pretty much on point this past decade. All of the original Avengers managed to make their respective roles their own, and newer additions to the team have been met positively — even Stan Lee himself said that Tom Holland was a great Spider-Man. Casting Spidey was a big one, though finding the right person to play Captain Marvel was also absolutely essential.

The studio ultimately put its faith in Brie Larson, who was unveiled as Captain Marvel back in 2016. What's become abundantly clear since then is that the character is going to play a huge part in the overarching MCU plot going forward, as Kevin Feige confirmed in a 2019 featurette. "Now Captain Marvel is about to take the lead, and be at the forefront of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe," the studio head said. It looks like Carol Danvers is being set up as a future leader of the Avengers, but that may depend on how well Captain Marvel actually does in cinemas.

Larson is an Oscar-winning actress and should have no trouble bringing Marvel's latest big screen recruit to life, but what about the rest of the cast? There are some truly talented actors in supporting roles here, most of whom you've probably seen on several occasions without even knowing it. From her allies in Starforce to the villains of the piece, here's why you recognize the cast of Captain Marvel.

In the comics, Minn-Erva worked closely with fellow Starforce member Att-Lass. They teamed-up during the Kree's conflict with the Shi'ar, but unlike Minn-Erva, Att-Lass was unaware that the troubles were secretly being orchestrated by the Kree Supreme Intelligence. When he discovered that she wanted to eradicate the vast majority of their race, he committed suicide using his suit's self-destruct feature, taking Minn-Erva with him.

Att-Lass is played by Algenis Pérez Soto, a relatively inexperienced actor with just two film credits to his name. One of those films was helmed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, co-directors of Captain Marvel. They've known Soto for a long time, having plucked him from obscurity to star in their 2008 baseball drama, Sugar. He fell off the radar following Sugar, but in 2017 Soto made an unexpected return to film with Dominican boxing drama Samba. 

You might also recognize Soto from Instagram, where he's been promoting Captain Marvel like crazy. Playing Att-Lass is clearly a big deal for the Dominican actor, who admits that he loves pulling on the Starforce uniform. "It feels great to be part of a film this big," he told Hip Latina. "I really hope they continue to give us Latinos the opportunity to demonstrate that yes, we can do it too."

Marvel fans will no doubt recognize Djimon Hounsou from his supporting role in 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy. He played the MCU incarnation of Korath-Thak, also known as Korath the Pursuer, head of the Pursuer Project. In the comics, he was a cyber-geneticist charged with engineering cybernetic warriors for the Kree military. He wound up using the tech that he invented on himself, gaining superhuman (or superkree, rather) powers in the process.

Hounsou made his breakthrough in Stephen Spielberg's Amistad, but he's perhaps best known for his turn as enslaved Numidian tribesman Juba in Ridley Scott's Gladiator, providing a foil for leading man Russell Crowe. The Benin-born actor went on to work with some of the industry's biggest names, including Angelina Jolie (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life), Leonardo DiCaprio (Blood Diamond), and Keanu Reeves (Constantine). What many people don't know is that he actually beat Chadwick Boseman to the part of King T'Challa — Hounsou voiced the Wakandan leader in BET's six-part animated Black Panther series.

When he spoke to Slashfilm at a February 2019 presser, Hounsou revealed that Captain Marvel has "nothing to do with Guardians other than the fact that some of those characters interact with each other later," but he confirmed that Korath is "still the same killing machine."

The identity of Jude Law's character was one of the biggest mysteries surrounding Captain Marvel during its production. The studio seemingly confirmed that the Brit was playing Mar-Vell (the original Captain Marvel in the comics) in December 2018, but a few months later, a featurette proving Law was actually playing Yon-Rogg dropped on Marvel's YouTube channel. He had to wear colored contact lenses to play the Kree commander, but most film fans will still have recognized Law from his many Hollywood roles over the years.

He came to the attention of international audiences at the turn of millennium when he starred alongside Matt Damon and a number of other big names in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Law went on to work with many of the industry's top directors (Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, and Wes Anderson, to name but a few) and in 2018, he took on the iconic role Albus Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, playing a younger version of the future Hogwarts headmaster.

It appears as though Captain Marvel was the most physically demanding role that Law has taken in a long while. When Slashfilm asked him how many action sequences he had in the movie, the actor confirmed that there were three in total. "One of them's been really fun, which we already shot," he said. "There are some other fantastic battle sequences."

The supremely talented Ben Mendelsohn seemed to appear from out of nowhere, but the Australian has quietly been putting in outstanding performances for years now. He came to the attention of international audiences with his starring role in the Aussie drama Animal Kingdom, a Melbourne-set crime flick that wowed critics the world over. The movie was his Hollywood calling card, and in recent years the character actor has become Tinseltown's new go-to villain.

You'll probably recognize Mendelsohn from his turn as Imperial Military director Orson Krennic in 2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, or perhaps you saw him in 2018's Ready Player One. He played Nolan Sorrento (CEO of the shady company seeking full control over the movie's virtual reality haven, the OASIS) in Steven Spielberg's love letter to '80s pop culture. He's gained a reputation as something of a chameleon, a description that just so happens to fit his Captain Marvel character perfectly.

The Emmy-winner plays shape-shifting villain Talos (known as Talos the Untamed in the comics) in the twenty-first MCU movie. Mendelsohn explained a little about his character in typically comical fashion when he spoke to reporters during a set visit. "I'm the battle commander of the Skrulls," he said (via Screen Rant). "We kind of rule the s***. Most of the rest of the Marvel comic universe are punks, basically."

This Is Us fans aside, nobody knew who Akira Akbar was when she was added to the cast of Captain Marvel. Akbar played a young version of Beth in NBC's hit dramedy show, only her third career appearance (she'd previously popped up in Criminal Minds and Grey's Anatomy). Without a doubt her biggest role to date is Monica Rambeau, the 11-year-old daughter of Carol Danvers' friend and former colleague, Maria Rambeau.

Unlike her mother, Monica was more than just a minor character in the comics. She gained superpowers after being bombarded with extradimensional energy and went on to take over the Captain Marvel mantle. She led the Avengers under that name until she was forced to concede it, at which point she changed her superhero alias to Photon, the name emblazoned across her mother's aircraft in Captain Marvel set photos.

Lashana Lynch seemed to indicate that Akbar might not actually become Captain Marvel in the MCU when she spoke with Rotten Tomatoes, revealing that the studio isn't planning on sticking to the source material religiously when it comes to Monica Rambeau. "They also switch things up sometimes to keep us on our toes, to keep us excited," she said (via Inverse). "And as a Marvel fan, I'm always excited why they didn't go by the comics with that particular detail, and then how it unravels down the line."

Clark Gregg's Phil Coulson is a rookie agent during the time Captain Marvel is set. Speaking to Den of Geek, Gregg revealed that the S.H.I.E.L.D stalwart will be a total newbie when he meets Carol Danvers. "He's a bit of a new guy in S.H.I.E.L.D.," Gregg said. "He's a lot younger. It's the earliest we will have seen him, so when he says, 'Mr. Stark, this isn't my first rodeo' in Iron Man, this is maybe the rodeo he's talking about."

Like Samuel L. Jackson, Gregg was digitally de-aged. He denied any effects had been used when the first trailer for the movie debuted. "Didn't use any," Gregg said after people started discussing the visual effects on Twitter. "Just took a four day nap." He was joking, but in truth, Gregg's face hasn't really changed all that much over the years, which is why you'll probably still recognize him from his pre-Marvel roles.

He managed to book minor movie parts throughout the '90s, later finding a home on TV. After landing one-off parts in Sex and the City and Will and Grace, Gregg joined the cast of The West Wing, sporadically appearing as FBI Special Agent Michael Casper between 2001 and 2004. In 2008 (the same year he joined the MCU), he directed and acted in Choke, an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's book of the same name.