Captain America: The First Avenger Turns 5: All the Ways Chris Evans Has Changed Since His Superhero Debut

He went from hot to hotter.

By Seija Rankin Jul 22, 2016 12:00 PMTags

Picture this: It's the year 2011, and Chris Evans is not an international superstar and widely agreed-upon hunk of the moment, but a kind-of-known actor and mildly-agreed-upon hunk.

We speak, of course, of that mythical time before his very first Captain America. That original installment—or, to be more specific, the reboot—Captain America: The First Avenger premiered exactly five years ago today. And while that may not seem like a whole lot of time (because it isn't a whole lot of time), so much has changed for Chris Evans.

And conversely, Chris Evans has changed a whole lot in the eyes of the world. 

Back when he first readied himself to don the blue-and-white suit, we knew him most notably for his role as the Harvard Hottie opposite Scarlett Johansson in The Nanny Diaries. Okay, so maybe that's just a very specific subset of society, but you get the idea. He was also in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and the old-school Fantastic Four (you know, the one with Jessica Alba), if that helps paint the picture of who Evans was in 2011. 

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When Chris was cast as the role of Steve Rogers—after a widely anticipated casting search—there was widespread acknowledgement that he had both the hot body and pretty face necessary to play the character. But beyond that not much was known about how he would handle the role (both onscreen and off, during the media scrutiny) or how many franchise installments he would stick around for. 

We think it's safe to say that we're all very thankful that the answers to both of those quandaries are amazingly and as long as we need him.

As many actors can attest, playing a superhero catapults one into instant stardom. And how do you celebrate instant stardom? Get yourself a big fancy actress girlfriend, of course. Enter Minka Kelly.  

They became the couple of the moment, making sure to keep America interested by going off-again and on-again a dizzying amount. Just look at them! It's impossible not to feel #relationshipgoals, even before #relationshipgoals was a thing! That matching sneakers-and-T-shirt look is too adorable for even the most hardened anti-celebrity-couple citizen to resist.

Over the next year Evans continued to make America consistently more jealous of Minka Kelly, before he returned to film the second Captain America installment (that would be the original Avengers; are you keeping up here?) with an even more superhero-y bod, but by 2014 he declared to the world that he was over partying and wanted a break from acting altogether, even threatening not to continue filming the superhero franchise. 

Yes, it was a dark time for the world indeed. We may have been able to find a place to understand his dilemma, but he had gotten us hooked on that gosh darn beautiful face. Over every woman's dead body would he disappear from public life. Just look at him! How was this guy going to slip into obscurity?

Ernesto Distefano/Getty Images

But then something changed in Chris Evans. Instead of going into early retirement, he became the Internet's Boyfriend. This was before the time of our collective digital obsession with Oscar Isaac or Benedict Cumberbatch or Rami Malek. He truly owned this time in the World Wide Web's spotlight. 

He visited children's hospitals as Captain America, posing for pictures that made our hearts melt. 

He struck up a made-for-the-digital-age football feud with the Internet's other favorite person, and rival namesake, Chris Pratt.  

He went viral for escorting Betty White to the stage during the 2015 People's Choice Awards. Just look at this and try not to groan with delight.

And now that he has seemingly signed on for approximately one million more installments of the Avengers/Captain America franchise, this iteration of Chris Evans is solidly installed in our lives. With each new movie he is forced to endure the required press tour, which he does oh-so-graciously, wearing sharper-than-sharp suits on the red carpets and engaging in all sorts of viral-in-the-making behavior on late-night shows. 

After five years, he gets it now, and he'll do what he has to do to keep us all satisfied. And we're not complaining. 

Any discussion of present-day Chris Evans would of course be incomplete without mention the moment he simultaneously broke all of our hearts and made us fall even more in love with him. 

Dave Allocca/Starpix/REX/Shutterstock

He started dating Jenny Slate

Yes, Jenny Slate who first became famous for the online parody Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. Jenny Slate who was a voice on Bob's Burgers. Jenny Slate whose first starring movie role was in Obvious Child, the abortion comedy. She's smart, she's irreverent, she's not one of those super fake-looking types. In other words, she's everything we inspire to be, which makes it so much more painful that she nabbed Chris Evans instead of us.

But it also makes us respect him so much more. Captain America is dating a witty comedian! Instead of a swimsuit model! What can't he do? To the next five years, Chris. 

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