Chris Evans on 'Lightyear,' playing bad guys and being 'a romantic person': 'I love love, who doesn't?'

Finally, Chris Evans gets to play an iconic hero that doesn’t involve working out.

That’s why it was so nice hitting a recording studio rather than a gym for his role as Buzz Lightyear in the animated sci-fi adventure “Lightyear” (in theaters Friday). “Pixar literally does the heavy lifting for this one,” quips Evans, whose buff and star-spangled Captain America won over Marvel fandom’s hearts and minds.

The "Toy Story" spinoff is an origin story for the beloved space ranger, with Evans voicing the role popularized by Tim Allen. In “Lightyear,” Buzz and his fellow intergalactic travelers get stuck on a planet millions of light-years from Earth and have to fight a robot army led by the evil emperor Zurg.

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Evans, 41, didn’t stray too far from his predecessor for inspiration.

“The reason we're doing this movie is because Tim Allen made such an iconic impact,” Evans says. “Not only would you be a fool to not take his interpretation because it worked so well, but the truth is this character is in fact the human version of that toy, so there does need to be overlap in terms of their cadence and nature."

“Lightyear” director Angus MacLane says he didn’t want to cast an Allen impressionist or even a “superheroic type” for Buzz but instead someone who had “a commanding presence that also is able to be funny without being goofy.” The filmmaker found that watching Evans in Bong Joon-ho’s dystopian film “Snowpiercer,” “where you really could see the range of what Chris could do.”

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It took a while, however, for Evans to find the right voice-acting mojo. “At the beginning, I almost felt like a deer in the headlights,” he recalls. “I would just be so still. You're so focused on your voice, it almost would rest every other part of my body. But with every passing session, you find a little more comfort and before you know it, you are incorporating your physicality and that would inform the deliveries.”

After almost a decade of playing Cap, Evans is switching up his “creative appetite” and playing some antagonists for a change. He played the shady, sweater-clad Ransom in Rian Johnson’s 2019 murder mystery “Knives Out” and in the upcoming Netflix spy film “The Gray Man” (in theaters July 15, streaming July 22), Evans stars as psychopathic rogue secret agent Lloyd Hansen, who's hunting down a former CIA colleague played by Ryan Gosling. (In the movie, Gosling’s character mocks his foe’s “trash 'stache.” Evans’ key to growing it? “Luckily, I just had to sit and wait.”)

Evans enjoys exploring “a frame of mind that's so dissimilar from my own. It's easy when you're playing someone like Captain America to understand why he feels compelled to do what's right. You certainly can relate to the desire to be good.”

In contrast, “someone like Lloyd has such a unique perspective on the world,” he adds, “and it manifests in such a dark way, but to him, it's completely normal. It's a fun chess game to try and get inside a role like that.”

After co-starring with Ana de Armas in “Knives Out” and “The Gray Man,” she and Evans reunite for next year’s Apple TV+ film “Ghosted,” which Evans describes as “a little throwback” to ’80s and ’90s action adventures like “Romancing the Stone."

“It's the type of movies that I love that I don't think get made enough,” says Evans, who got a kick out of mixing romance and comedy. “Most characters you channel through your own experience and I consider myself a romantic person. I love love, who doesn't? It's nice to have that take a center role in a piece of material as opposed to saving the world.”

An Instagram photo of his “fluffy” hairdo for the role snagged 4.5 million likes, proof of Evans’ exceeding popularity and penchant to go viral at any time. “Most of my career, I'm just standing on the shoulders of giants already. So if that type of interest in my hair is the downstream impact of the artistry of other people, I'll take it,” he says. However, Evans admits that he’s not as into the leading-man gig as he is group efforts these days.

“Playing a supporting role is the dream career. It's my favorite thing,” says Evans, whose upcoming films include “Red One” with Dwayne Johnson and “Project Artemis” opposite longtime “Avengers” partner Scarlett Johansson. “Being No. 1 on the call sheet, it can be a strange burden. Letting me be like three or four or five is the sweet spot. Plus the role is usually a little more fun anyway.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Chris Evans talks 'Lightyear,' Tim Allen, being a 'romantic person'