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Jack O’Halloran played Non in Superman and Superman II
O’Halloran catches up with PEOPLE, recalling how he got the role and what it was like working with the late Christopher Reeve
Reeve died in October 2004 at the age of 52
Jack O’Halloran never imagined he’d end up in a classic Superman film.
The actor, now 83, was still early in his acting career when he got the opportunity to sign on to the 1978 film. He recalls how it happened in a conversation with PEOPLE.
“I was doing a film in Spain with Gene Hackman called March or Die, and they sent the script down to me, and they sent one to Gene, and then they invited us up to London,” O’Halloran recalls. The pair visited director Richard Donner, who raised the idea of playing a deaf and mute character to O’Halloran.
“And I said, ‘You know, I totally embrace it,’ ” the actor replied.
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Jack O’Halloran in “Superman II”
Credit: Warner Bros/Dc Comics/Kobal/Shutterstock
Donner was surprised by the response, but O’Halloran explained, “Jackie Gleason was a friend of mine who did a picture called Gigot very well. I said, ‘If I ever got a chance to do a film where I had to use body language, facial expressions, I would embrace that to do it.’ And he thought that was brilliant because the character that I played, Non, was a major scientist, and they lobotomized him because he was hanging out with Zod. So it worked out well.”
O’Halloran landed the role, while Hackman was ultimately cast as Lex Luthor. Of working with Christopher Reeve, who was the titular Superman, on those films, O’Halloran said, “Christopher was a good kid.”
“It was the first big movie he ever did, and he came from a very wealthy family, so he was like a spoiled little kid,” he laughed.
“You work with somebody for three years, you start to gain a relationship with them. But when he came on the set, he was a 170-pound skinny kid, but Donner saw something in him that he liked. David Prowse, who did Darth Vader, he and I worked Christopher out, put 20 pounds on him. They bulked him up and defined him pretty good because he had a bit of an ego problem, and it turned out well.”
Christopher Reeve as Superman
Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection
He concluded, “He was the best Superman-Clark Kent combination. He went from Superman to Clark Kent better than anybody.”
O’Halloran appreciated Donner for “letting me go and letting me do what I do well.”
“It worked out pretty well. And I remember the first time I did a Comic-Con, and somebody came up to me and said, ‘Boy, your character scared me to death, but I loved your character so much.’ And I said, ‘Oh, thank you.’ And he said, ‘Oh my God, you can talk?’ I said, ‘I must have done a pretty good job if you think I couldn’t talk.’ “
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