Dean Cain is about to pull off a lightning-fast costume change that would impress even Superman. Standing in front of an infinity pool overlooking a golf course and the Las Vegas Strip in the distance, the actor is wearing a faded gray T-shirt, gym shorts and no shoes. A Greek Orthodox cross and a military dog tag hang from a chain around his neck. The man who played the Man of Steel and his alter ego, Clark Kent, on the trailblazing series “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” needs to morph into something camera ready.
“I’m gonna have to go put on a jacket and a shirt and leave my shorts behind,” he says as he pops a tangerine-flavored nicotine lozenge in his mouth and heads upstairs for a Zoom appearance on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” to discuss the latest “Superman,” two days before it unspools in theaters.
With Superman in the zeitgeist this summer, Cain, 58, is an obvious go-to voice, given his headline-grabbing conservative takes on the film and the amount of time he spent in the latex suit. Only eight actors have appeared as Kal-El in live-action films and TV series, from the most iconic (Christopher Reeve) to the most recent (David Corenswet in this month’s Warner Bros. tentpole). With the exception of “Smallville”’s Tom Welling, no one has clocked more time on-screen as Superman than Cain, who appeared in 87 episodes of the hit ABC series, which ran from 1993 to 1997. Though George Reeves starred in 104 episodes of the 1950s version of “Superman,” each installment was 30 minutes to “Lois & Clark”’s 46 minutes. Cain also remains the first and only Superman of color and certainly the most sexually active on-screen “Teri Hatcher and I were making out all the time in beds, half clothes on, half off,” he says of the show’s risqué vibe.
The professional football player turned ’90s heartthrob was among the highest paid of his super peers thanks to sheer volume over the four-season run “Lois & Clark,” which averaged 18 million viewers at its height. “It was more money than I had ever seen in my life,” he says. “My entire contract for the Buffalo Bills was equal to a couple episodes of ‘Lois & Clark.’”
In addition to his Superman cred, Cain is something of a cultural Zelig. He deflowered fellow Princetonian Brooke Shields, whom he dated for four and a half years at a time when she was arguably the most recognizable woman in the world and the press obsessed over her virginity, all of which she detailed in her 2014 memoir. At Princeton, he also overlapped with everyone from Michelle Obama to Lyle Menendez. His love life was tabloid catnip and included a six-month relationship with fellow ’90s sex symbol Pamela Anderson at the beginning of her “Baywatch” run. “That candle burned hot and short,” he says. “She wanted to be with the rock-star kind of guy, and that’s not me. … Only fond memories of her.” As a real-life journalist — and not merely playing a Daily Planet reporter — he interviewed people like Mark Wahlberg and Ron Howard when he co-hosted “The Today Show” with Hoda Kotb. In more recent years, Fox News has rolled out the welcome mat, while President Donald Trump enlisted him to host the inaugural parade. (It was canceled due to extreme cold.)
As is the case with Superman, Cain seems to toggle back and forth between two disparate identities. There’s the industry kid who grew up alongside the Penns, the Lowes and the Sheens — all of whom he considers family — as the adopted son of “Young Guns” director Christopher Cain. There’s also the NRA board member who publicly endorsed Trump three times, a move that has relegated most like-minded actors to the sidelines.
“I love President Trump. I’ve been friends with him forever,” he says of the mogul turned politician most loathed by Hollywood. (They first met when Cain judged a Miss Universe pageant in 2009 alongside the late Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley.) “Trump is actually one of the most empathetic, wonderful, generous people you’ll ever meet.”
Some MAGA-adjacent Hollywood folks come in for mockery: Think Scott Baio or Roseanne Barr. But Cain can’t be quite as easily dismissed. He’s an Ivy League graduate who majored in history and appears to have a genuine curiosity for the world. He is quick to pull out his iPhone and show pictures from the 56 countries he’s visited and the 30 world leaders with whom he has held court, including Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. Close friends include Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad — a relationship forged during their Princeton days.
“I can’t wait to show you the whole house,” Cain tells me after his TV hit. “It’s incredible. Feel free to wander around.”
It’s 10 a.m., and the temperature is inching toward 106 degrees, so I head inside and do just that. The 6,500-square-foot three-story contemporary is minimalist in decor but teeming with superfluities, including an elevator, a first-floor gym, a screening room, an infrared sauna and a master-bedroom walk-in closet bigger (and tidier) than my SoHo apartment.
Dean Cain with President Donald Trump in February 2020
Courtesy of Cain
Indeed, the whole place is lavish, and represents a sort of alternative choice for a star who’s chosen a different track from the L.A. life he once seemed set to inhabit. In 2023, Cain sold his house in Malibu — the oceanside city he called home since the age of 5 — and uprooted to the land of no state income tax and open carry laws. All the while, he quietly built a cottage industry of faith-based movies, with 16 to his credit so far, like this year’s “Little Angels,” which he wrote, directed and toplines. (Later this summer, he is directing, writing, producing and starring opposite Kevin Sorbo in “Holy One,” a Vegas-set redemption movie that revolves around the world of golf.) And if there’s a Hollywood blacklist for Trumpers, Cain seems to have dodged it. In fact, the biggest reason Cain doesn’t work much in mainstream Hollywood any longer stems from a choice he made in 2000, to prioritize being a single parent to his only child, a now 25-year-old son.
“He’s always had a real soft spot in my heart in terms of just how open he was,” says Greg Berlanti, who first cast Cain as a gay lothario in the 2000 rom-com “The Broken Hearts Club.” “He embraced the part completely. He embraced the rehearsal process where I had the guys all going to gay bars and hanging out together. He embraced the straight members of the cast and the gay members of the cast. And always with a smile on his face.” (Berlanti brought Cain back for an arc in the CW series “Supergirl” from 2015 to 2017.)
For his appearance on the Morgan panel, Cain turned up the MAGA volume on the new “Superman” and its subtle jabs at red-state America (Ma and Pa Kent appear as though they were plucked from a Wonder Bread factory) and possibly Israel (progressive influencers seem to think the fictitious Boravia, a U.S.-backed, heavily militarized human rights abuser is an intentional metaphor for the Jewish state). “Look, don’t try and make it all woke and crazy!” Cain told Morgan, acknowledging that he hadn’t yet seen the film. For me, he’s a little less interested in the political dimension — and more appreciative of Superman’s pooch. “Seeing Krypto in the trailer gave me goose bumps,” he says, nodding in the direction of a dog bed that looks well used. “He saves a squirrel. He saves a little girl. I respect that.”
Still, everything is political these days, even superheroes. And Cain, who has been conservative most of his life — save for casting a vote twice for Bill Clinton — has zero qualms about critiquing Hollywood’s leftward bent.
“My dad told me not to voice my political opinions,” he says. “I guess I didn’t listen to my dad.”
With that, Cain and I jump into his Tesla Model S Plaid for a tour of the neighborhood and lunch at his favorite organic haunt. “If you want to see speed, lean your head against the backrest so you don’t get shocked by this. Ready? OK?” he says. We hit 85 mph in what feels like a split second. “Oh my God!” I scream. He then reverts to regular speed to show me the house he bought for his parents and to take me on a trip down memory lane.
Born in Michigan, Dean George Tanaka was the younger of two boys. He never knew his biological father, who was a Japanese American serviceman. His mother, Sharon Thomas, moved the boys to Los Angeles when Cain was 3 so that she could escape the relentless snow and pursue acting. Not long after arriving, she married Christopher Cain, who adopted the toddlers and settled the family in Malibu. The couple later had a daughter, who is Dean’s half-sister.
One of Cain’s early memories is making a Super 8 with Charlie Sheen and Chris Penn, both a year ahead of him in elementary school. Mimicking their industry parents, Sheen (son of “Apocalypse Now” star Martin Sheen) and Penn wanted to make a Vietnam movie.
Dean Cain on “Fox and Friends”
“They needed a Vietnamese person. Of course it was me. They’re like, ‘You be the gook,’” he says. ‘I’m like, ‘What’s a gook?’ I didn’t know what it meant.”
About two decades later, when the press began covering his casting as Superman, Cain got a similar taste of being the one who is different from the rest of the group.
“It was 1993 and I remember a fan going, ‘We wanted Superman, not Sushi Man,’” he says.
Cain took no offense at being othered by either his friends or his fans. He thinks identity politics are stupid, particularly in Hollywood, with its endless list of “firsts.” Henry Cavill was the first British Superman. Corenswet is the first Jewish Man of Steel.
“For the love of God, he’s a Kryptonian. He could be green. Does it matter?” asks Cain, who would personally like to see Michael B. Jordan don the cape because he “has all the qualities of Superman — that humility, that kindness, that openness, that earnestness.”
But Cain also bristles at the idea that he is not embracing his own Japanese identity.
“Tanaka is my given name, and it’s funny that people are like, ‘Well, you tried to hide that.’ It’s tattooed on my ankle,” he says, pointing to the kanji characters that spell his name in ink. “My family was interred in the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho. That was a horrible injustice, but I don’t think that I deserve any sort of reparations.”
After Princeton, Cain signed with the Bills, but his fledgling career as a professional athlete ended at training camp due to a knee injury. Plan B was acting. Though his mother was an actress, mostly in movies directed by his father, Cain was discouraged from pursuing a Hollywood career. “When I finally said I was going to be an actor, my dad gave me a three-word piece of advice: ‘Don’t. Do. It.’” Again, Cain didn’t listen.
After landing small parts in “A Different World” and “Beverly Hills, 90210,” Cain auditioned for the role that would change his career trajectory. “It came down to myself and Kevin Sorbo for Superman,” he recalls. “I had to come back to audition with 10 different Lois Lanes. I remember faces. I was in fight-or-flight mode. I was trying to survive.”
Among the whiz of would-be Lois Lanes he remembers was Melora Hardin, who famously played Jan on “The Office,” and Paula Marshall, who plays Marsha Jacobs (wife of Eric Dane’s Cal Jacobs) on “Euphoria.” Both lost out to Hatcher, who became a breakout TV star as the plucky reporter before her “Desperate Housewives” days.
While he waited for the final word from the network, Cain took a friend on a ski trip to Utah and made a promise: If he got the role, new skis were on him. Then he got the call. “My buddy turns to me and goes, ‘Man, for the rest of your life, people are going to call you Superman,’” he remembers. “I couldn’t fathom that being the case at the time, but it changed my life insanely.”
Soon, Stage 14 on the Warner Bros. lot would be home, sandwiched between two series also in their rookie runs. “Little shows called ‘ER’ and ‘Friends,’” he jokes. “I loved playing basketball with George Clooney and talking and joking. Teri was the best Lois Lane of all time, in my opinion. She just drove the show.”
As a star athlete, Cain was accustomed to the adulation. “But this was on a much more gigantic scale. Your life is gone. I had been around movies and watched my dad do it and watched my friends Rob Lowe and Charlie Sheen do well. And make mistakes. Like, ‘Don’t do a sex tape at the Democratic National Convention.’ Sorry, Rob. ‘Don’t do cocaine with hookers,’” he says with a playful smirk. “I was certainly not going to make the same mistakes.”
Cain with Rob Lowe and Charlie Sheen in 2004
L. Cohen/WireImage/Getty Images
The pace was grueling: five-day work weeks that began at 6 a.m. on Monday and finished at 7 a.m. on Saturday. “We called it Fraturday!” Cain says. “There was no time to work out, because they couldn’t give me a workout clause, because then they’d have to for every other star and then it sets precedent for Warner Bros. That’s why I haven’t done a series since. It feels like suffocating. You feel claustrophobic.”
Like most TV stars, he also got financially screwed. “I didn’t know enough back then about residuals. Warner Bros. buries the bodies deep and makes it look like it’s lost money. There’s no possible way,” he says. “But I should have sued. George Clooney did it. He sued on ‘ER’ and got a big payout for his participation. I was advised not to because ‘You don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you.’”
The work itself was far from glamorous. The costume was uncomfortable.
“When they first brought it to me, it was this royal blue spandex bodysuit. We ended up putting in stirrups so that it stayed in place. And the boots were a whole lace-up thing at first. We worked on it as time went on,” he says. “I remember it being 110 in Burbank. In the Superman suit, you can’t sweat. If you sweat, it balls up. So I didn’t. I’m a Japanese dude. I don’t sweat that much. I’m not hairy at all. They didn’t have to shave my chest or anything. But still …”
The flying was excruciating because the wires cut off circulation. “There’s no blood flow going to your legs. After hanging for hours, I would have to get a massage just to keep the blood moving from quadrant to quadrant. Teri would cry. She’d be in tears every single time we had to fly because it hurt.”
But the combination of a skintight suit in constant flight helped turn the 26-year-old Cain into a primetime sex symbol. Typically, the actress is objectified, but with “Lois & Clark,” Cain was the one who executives and crew talked about in the third person when he was in the room. He never took it personally.
“Any guy who tells you he feels bad being objectified, I mean, really? Come on,” he insists. “It’s a wonderful compliment.”
No one was ever inappropriate. Except …
As the day wears on, Cain reveals something that he has never before told a reporter. “I could have had the biggest sexual harassment lawsuit in Hollywood history,” he says.
When pressed for details, he declines to name the person who harassed him or provide any further comment on the matter.
There were always murmurs. “Lois & Clark” ended abruptly. The Season 4 cliffhanger was never resolved. Cain, who wrote two episodes for Seasons 2 and 3, had already written scripts for Season 5. His plans to direct several episodes evaporated. The harassment took its toll on his relationship at the time with volleyball star Gabrielle Reece.
Now in his early 30s, Cain’s life was about to change dramatically once again. His new girlfriend, Playboy Playmate Samantha Torres, got pregnant.
“She figured we’re gonna get married because that’s what you do when you get pregnant out of wedlock. And I was like, ‘That’s not gonna work,’” says Cain, who has never married. “My parents were angry.”
So, too, was Torres, who made visitations with their son difficult. He sued for joint custody. After spending $1.5 million on lawyers, he was awarded 50-50 custody of Christopher Dean Cain. Parenting became his raison d’être, while his acting career took a backseat.
“I turned down ‘Band of Brothers.’ I also turned down a huge series. I would have been maybe the highest-paid actor in all of television,” he notes.
But that long-running series, which Cain declines to name out of respect for the actor who wound up getting the role after he passed, shot in Vancouver, and Torres didn’t want to live there. “I’m adopted. I know how important it is to have a father,” he says. So Cain bought a house in Torres’ hometown of Ibiza, Spain, so that co-parenting could be more seamless. When his son was 9, he was awarded full legal and physical custody. Tensions between Torres and Cain eventually died down, and she asked him to be the godfather of her twins, who are now 14. He still owns the Ibiza house, one of several savvy real estate investments he made with his “Lois & Clark” money.
“With Dean, what you see is what you get. He’s not afraid to speak his mind or take a stand, no matter how popular or unpopular that position might be. And I admire that,” says his friend Kia Jam, an Iranian producer whose credits include “Lucky Number Slevin” and “City of Lies.” “But what most people don’t see are the things he does quietly, without any need for recognition: the trips to war zones to visit and support U.S. troops, the work he does with wounded warriors.”
Instead of diving back into the TV grind, he said yes to small movies like “Broken Hearts Club.”
“People don’t realize that in 1999 when we were making it, straight actors did not want to play gay, and they were all advised not to, especially if they were a heartthrob,” Berlanti notes. “It was daring.”
For his part, Cain never understood the fuss. “I played gay in two films, and I loved it. And when I did Greg’s film, people were like, ‘We’re concerned because people might think you’re gay in real life.’ And I said, ‘Well, then I’ve done my job.’”
All that might seem at odds with his current perch as one of the higher-profile members of Trump world, one who makes Christian movies, loves guns and is a sworn deputy sheriff and reserve police officer. As Cain eats his chicken quesadilla and fries, a man idles outside the glass window that separates our table from him. Cain tells me the man, who seems erratic, has caused issues in the restaurant previously. He assures me he can take care of any situation.
“Are you carrying right now?” I ask.
“I’m always carrying,” he answers.
Cain is a fount of strong opinions. Asked about his former classmates — one famous, one infamous — he lets loose. About the former Michelle Robinson and future first lady, he says, “Isn’t she the one who said, ‘Harvey, you’re the guy my daughter should work for,’ right?” (Malia Obama interned at the Weinstein Co. after the first accusation against Weinstein surfaced publicly but before a stream of claims exploded into view.) As for Menendez, who along with his brother, Erik, killed their parents in 1989 and is now seeking to be released, with Kim Kardashian championing the cause, the law-and-order-loving Cain isn’t sold. “He reloaded,” he offers plainly. As for the “Superman,” Cain is disheartened by what his fellow “Piers Morgan Uncensored” panelists have told him about the depiction of Ma and Pa Kent and the recurring plot theme that Superman needs to be rescued. “James Gunn and his decision to make Ma and Pa Kent the stupid rednecks. That’s a choice. And Superman has to be saved, like, repeatedly? On a movie this size, every decision is a choice made carefully. And [DC Studios co-head] Peter Safran is a Princeton guy, too, a year ahead of me, but he’s never hired me,” he says with a laugh.
Even if his positions deviate from the Hollywood norm, he doesn’t feel like an outcast. “Brooke and I are still great friends. Politics never comes up in any of our conversations, ever, that’s for sure. And she would defend me to the grave, I promise you,” he says. “She called me before she published the book and asked if she could include stuff from us, and I said, ‘I trust you implicitly. Say whatever you want.’ And she told the truth.”
Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder and Cain in “The Curse”
Everett Collection
Nowadays, Cain occasionally will work inside the studio system, albeit in edgier fare. He appeared in six episodes of Maria Bamford’s semi-autobiographical dark comedy “Lady Dynamite” for Netflix and two episodes of the Emma Stone psychological thriller “The Curse” for Showtime. Otherwise, he is content making his slate of Christian-themed films. The budgets are small (less than $10 million). But he believes the impact is big. The late Andrew Breitbart, the conservative firebrand who founded Breitbart News and co-founded HuffPost, once told Cain that all politics is downstream from culture. “So if you’re making shows like ‘The Chosen,’ or you’re making a lot of these faith-based movies that I make, you’re putting out content that affects people in what I would consider a very positive way, with good, strong morals and values,” he says.
Family is clearly important to Cain. His father made the kind of sacrifice you don’t hear often when it comes to industry parents. When Cain was recruited by colleges to play football, most offered full scholarships. Ivy League schools do not. Turning down Princeton was not an option.
“He sold his car to keep me at Princeton,” Cain says. “He took the bus to his meetings in prep for ‘Young Guns,’ and he’d get off two blocks away and walk the rest of the way so nobody would see that he was taking the bus. He did that for me. So my dad is my hero.”
As happy hour approaches, Mom and Dad will soon be arriving at his home. Cain packs up his leftovers in a to-go box in case his son is hungry. Back at the house, a helium balloon floats above the kitchen table. It’s a remnant from a birthday party Cain threw for his sister the previous week and is starting to lose its buoyancy.
“My dad has his own chair, and if Dad’s here, nobody else can be in that chair. Except the dog,” he says as he pauses to reflect. “This is where my family congregates. It’s my happy place.”