Is Charlie Cox Blind? The ‘Daredevil’ Actor Received an Award from the Blind Community

With “Daredevil” returning for another season, fans have been buzzing about Charlie Cox returning to reprise his role as the titular character.

In the Netflix adaptation of the Marvel comics’ “Daredevil,” Charlie Cox plays the blind superhero of the same name. In the story, Daredevil is blinded as a child by an accident that somehow enhanced his other senses.

Daredevil, also known as Matt Murdock in the story, fights for law and justice day and night. He works as a lawyer by day and puts on his Daredevil suit at night while patrolling the city.

Collider Editor-in-Chief Steve “Frosty” Weintraub (L) and actor Charlie Cox speak during the “Daredevil” panel at the sixth annual Amazing Las Vegas Comic Con at the Las Vegas Convention Center on July 1, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. | Source: Getty Images

Through the years, Cox has done a great job portraying the blind superhero, which once won him praise from the blind community for how he prepared for the role.

Because he played Daredevil so well, many wondered whether Cox himself was blind in real life. Little did they know, it took months of training and preparation for him to do justice to the role.

CHARLIE COX DIDN’T KNOW DAREDEVIL WAS BLIND

Cox himself is not blind. In fact, when he auditioned for the role, he did not know that the character he was gunning for was blind.

Despite this, Cox went to extreme lengths just to bring the character to life as accurately as he could. While preparing for the show, Cox worked with the American Foundation for the Blind to prepare for the role.

Ultimately, he was presented the Helen Keller Achievement Award at the American Foundation for the Blind’s Helen Keller Achievement Awards in 2015 for his perseverance in portraying the blind community accurately.

Aside from working with the community, Cox also practiced method acting during the first season of the Netflix series. He intentionally blinded himself for a while to perform the role better. Talking about the experience, he said:

“I went to this specialist, an opticianist – and I had these lenses made that were identical to my eyes but they completely blinded me. You put them in and I couldn’t see a thing.”

CHARLIE COX FAILED AN AUDITION FOR ACTING BLIND

While “Daredevil” thrust Cox into the spotlight, it also caused him to lose a big opportunity to join another big film franchise. During an interview, the actor revealed that playing a blind character conditioned him not to look people in the eye.

Cox went to an audition for one of the “Star Wars” films, where halfway through the audition, the casting director asked why he wasn’t looking at him.

At that moment, he realized he had gotten used to not making eye contact because he had been playing a blind character for years. Unfortunately for Cox, he never got a callback from that audition.

On another occasion, while Cox was researching for his role on the show, he was attacked on the streets of New York City by a woman who thought he was recording a blind man without consent.

Cox revealed that the woman had hit him because she assumed he was filming a blind man without permission. The blind man turned out to be a good friend of his, Joe Strechay.

CHARLIE COX IS MORE THAN DAREDEVIL

Although Cox is best known for being Marvel’s Daredevil, he is more than the superhero character he portrays. Born Charlie Thomas Cox in London, England, he is of English, Scottish, and Irish descent.

He first learned about his passion for acting at Sherborne School in Dorset, where he honed his acting skills. Although he started in the theater scene, he eventually ventured into film acting as he was not a fan of singing, which was most often a requirement in theater shows.

By the mid-1990s, he left London to pursue a career in the United States, where he starred in the likes of “The Theory of Everything,” “Daredevil,” “Kin,” and the upcoming TV series “Echo.”

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