Charlize Theron knows him as Charlize Theron's boyfriend. The rest of the world know him as that guy from that film once. Oh, AND Charlize Theron's boyfriend. And now the star of Queen of the Damned and all-round Icon of Cinema Stuart Townsend IS the man who's just been kicked off Thor the day before the start of principal photography.
The reason this is 100% newsworthy? Well, we've been here before... Cast your mind back and you'll remember that Stuart Townsend was famously cast as Aragorn in a small independent film called Lord of the Rings (you may have heard of it?) before getting the boot by a certain Kiwi director called Peter Jackson (you may have heard of him?) upon the realisation of a grave and monumental error. The part eventually went to poet, photographer, legend, Mr. Viggo Mortensen (you may have heard of him, too?)
The official reason for Townsend's departure is "creative differences" although rumours are all over the place that he showed up 6 hours for a crucial screen test thus provoking the ire of King of All Luvvies and saviour of existentialist Swedish cop drama Kenneth Branagh, the man behind the camera on Marvel's latest mega-project. Seriously - getting kicked off one multi-million dollar fantasy franchise is unlucky, getting kicked off two is just, well, plain rubbish.
Townsend had been lined up to play Fandral, sidekick of Thor. His replacement is Joshua Dallas, whose most high profile role to date was a turn in the recent Descent sequel. Oh, he also played "Node 2" in the "Silence In The Library" episode of Doctor Who. As Scotty says, "exciting!"
Of course, we may well be selling Townsend short here. It could just be that he simply is the single most uncompromising bad-ass in Hollywood. Either that or he's a total c***.
