Remember the 2004 The Punisher film? Yeah, these days, that version of the popular character has mostly been relegated to the sidelines since Jon Bernthal took over in 2016. But it turns out the actor who played Frank Castle in the film, Thomas Jane, doesn’t even think he should’ve played the character in the first place.
“I was miscast as Frank Castle,” he recently told ComicBookMovie.com. “Frank Castle is an Italian, he’s got black hair, he’s got a whole different sort of lineage that was born out of [being] the antithesis of the mob in the ’70s. I’m not that guy. I had to dye my hair black. I had to become a different guy. I’m happy the part is played by somebody who is more right for that role. I had fun, I did the best I could with it, and I’m very grateful for it, but I’m not that guy.”
Jane’s time as the Punisher saw him going up against Howard Saint, played by John Travolta. Their movie garnered a painful 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and only grossed about $54 million on a $33 million budget. IGN’s The Punisher review returned a 3/10.
The actor did not reprise his role for the 2008 sequel Punisher: War Zone — duties were passed to Ray Stevenson — but he did return as Punisher for the 2005 PS2 game The Punisher.
Jon Bernthal took over the character in 2016 when he appeared in the second season of Netflix’s short-lived series Daredevil, Bernthal later went on to play Frank Castle in a spinoff series titled simply The Punisher from 2017 to 2019. He also reprised the role in the 2025 Disney+ series Daredevil: Born Again.
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Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
