David Harbour has revealed that he keeps a framed photo of Hellboy (his version, not Ron Perlman’s) in his closet, offering him a chance to “remember where [he] came from.”
In a recent video for Architectural Digest, David Harbour took viewers on a tour of the Brooklyn apartment he shares with his wife, Lily Allen, who he married in 2020. When they get to David Harbour’s nearly all-black closet–admittedly smaller than Allen’s–he reaches past a couple hats and tells viewers, “Just whenever I’m feeling particularly good about myself…I like to always remember where I came from.” Harbour then pulls out a small framed photo of himself as Hellboy, who he played in the 2019 reboot. Allen can be seen laughing in the background, also apparently quite aware of how awful Hellboy is.
David Harbour, of course, didn’t come from Hellboy, but the framed photo–which could be a plant, but it still gets a laugh–does show he can at least be self-deprecating on the subject. It, too, shows he is humble. Harbour may have massive success, but no actor in Hollywood can escape a dud, and he’s well aware that at any point, he could have another flop on his resume. Hellboy ended up making $55 million on a $50 million budget. It also proved a critical failure and even earned five Razzie nominations.
Harbour previously said he learned a valuable lesson from his Hellboy experience: “I learned not to f*ck with established IP, that’s for sure…I feel like whatever failures or successes that movie was, of which there are many, the movie itself had such a thing going into it that it was like almost impossible.” He also had a bad feeling early on, saying, “Immediately when it began, even when it was announced, I realised that people did not want that character reinvented. I was very naive and optimistic about what we were going to do.” Harbour later reached out to Ryan Reynolds, who had his own superhero failure with Green Lantern, which begs the question, Does Reynolds keep a framed photo of Hal Jordan in his hat closet?
You can watch the full video, complete with some The Sims-esque decorating, here.
What did you think of David Harbour in Hellboy? Did it have redeeming qualities or is it a full-on flop? Let us know in the comments below!