Despite the fact that he’s been acting for over 20 years and played a wide variety of roles, there’s no question that Tyler Hoechlin has gained the greatest amount of attention for his portrayal of Superman on the CW’s Supergirl. On top of that, there are the network’s annual superhero crossover events that brings together characters from not only the Girl of Steel but The Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow and, this year, Black Lightning and Batwoman. Now there are increasing rumors that with Henry Cavill vacating the cape, Tyler may be flying to the big screen as the Man of Steel.

Warner Bros

“That’s the weird thing,” Tyler explains to us in an exclusive interview at a special screening of his next film, Can You Keep a Secret. “Someone else said the same thing to me today. They’re, like, ‘There’s rumors you’re going to play Superman’ and I said, ‘I do play Superman.’ ‘No, I know that. But in the movies.’ I don’t know anything about that. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to say anything anyway.”

The other question is whether or not he’d be up for the idea. “This was a realization I’ve come to in, maybe, the last year of my life,” he says. “I think of the idea of preferring it to be on TV or to be on the big screen as someone kind of posed it to me before. I really think it comes down to an ego thing. If being on the big screen makes it a bigger deal or better, to me that’s a self-fulfillment kind of thing. I’m just very happy and content to play a character that I believe stands for something good, whether it’s a big screen or a small screen. People have big screens at home now, so, you know, it is what it is. I consider myself lucky to play a character who stands for a good thing, and that I get the opportunity to keep going back.”

Mega Agency

As to the best thing about playing Superman, Tyler muses, “Reminding yourself that it’s okay to be hopelessly optimistic, even when people don’t always give you the reason to believe it. I think at the end of the day, believing in redemption and believing that we’re all going to find a way to be better is the only way to move forward. I like that.”

Back when Tyler was first cast as Superman, we sat down with him for a wide-ranging, and in-depth, exclusive interview that began with his childhood passion for baseball and tracked his gradual evolution to acting in films like Road to Perdition and TV shows like 7th Heaven, Teen Wolf and, of course, Supergirl.

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