Life Before Superman
Dean Cain always thought that his career was to be on a field, kicking a football. Though he did sign up with an NFL team, a knee injury meant that he had to change course and think of an alternate career. So he went down the Hollywood road. Whether it broke his heart to leave the world of sports forever and get into acting is anyone's guess. Maybe he was just pragmatic about it. And let's face it, if it wasn't sports, Hollywood, thanks to his father was what he was most comfortable with.
The irony of it all was that when he majored in history from Princeton, his thesis in the senior year was The History and Development of the Functions of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Was this a sort of omen as to what direction his life was going to take?
Dean had acted before that in The Stone Boy which was a film his father had done. It was just a small part but the fact remained that he had entered the world of lights, camera, action. Once he realized that football had forsaken him, he plunged into the world of TV and besides screenwriting, he also acted in quite a number of high profile commercials. These spanned a wide spectrum from McDonald's to fitness clubs, to beer to Diet Coke.
This was followed by bit parts in TV serials and gradually he came into the public eye. There were parts in Life Goes on, Beverly Hills 90210 and Life Goes On. There was Grapevine and A Different World. Somehow, Dean Cain was very much of a watched actor because the commercials he did as well as the TV serials he acted in were all popular. There was something about him that was riveting and this was what got him the roles whether in serials or the ad films. The fact that he was so good looking helped things along. That and his beautiful woman friends – he always seemed to have one on his arm so obviously, he was the media's pet.
Then in 1993, he landed the part of Clark Kent and Superman in the TV serial Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and there was no looking back. A new Superman had arrived and what a super role he played right through the tenure of the serial.