SUPERMAN SOARS AGAIN! AS THE DAVID CORENSWET STARS GREATEST AMERICAN HERO

THE BREAKOUT STAR PLAYING THE MAN OF STEEL HAS SPECIAL POWERS OF HIS OWN: TELLING DAD JOKES AND KEEPING A CLEAR HEAD WHILE JUGGLING FAMILY LIFE AND HIS EPIC NEW ROLE

- ERIC ANDERSSON

Up, up and away—20 stories up, to be precise—Superman star David Corenswet sits in a hotel suite overlooking New York City’s Central Park for an interview with People. Outside, the sidewalks buzz with locals and tourists, all of whom have no idea that a superhero looms above them. But even if he were out on the street on this sweltering June afternoon, the dark-haired, 6’4” Corenswet doubts he’d get hounded for selfies. “People tell me I look like Superman,” he says with a twinkle in his bright blue eyes, “but don’t realize that I’m playing Superman.”

That’s about to change, well, faster than a speeding bullet. Corenswet, 31, a Philadelphia native, first gained notice for his brief but affecting performance as tragic high school student River on Ryan Murphy’s 2019-20 series The Politician. Now he is poised to break out in a big way as the comic-book hero, a character as closely associated with America as baseball and cowboys (even though he’s an alien from the planet Krypton). Playing the role, the actor told Entertainment Weekly six years ago, was his “pie-in-the-sky ambition.” But as he says now, “I thought it was impossible that I’d ever get to play Superman because it’s impossible that anybody would get to play Superman.”

After a secretive audition process, the on-the rise actor (he was the villain in last summer’s