The guests of Heroes Dutch Comic Con Summer 2024 - Part two

This weekend it is finally time for the Summer edition of Heroes Dutch Comic Con. In our previous (two) articles we already talked about most of the special movie and TV guests for this editio, but not all of them. The list goes on and our excitement gets bigger!

She was announced for the last edition, but due to personal circumstances, she had to cancel. Luckily she was announced again for this edition. She is mostly known for her amazing roles as Robin Scherbatsky in "How I Met Your Mother" and Maria Hill in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We already met her once and she is one of the nicest celebrities we met (and we met a lot). We are so happy that Cobie Smulders will be making her way to Utrecht upcoming weekend!

Cobie Smulders was born Jacoba Francisca Maria Smulders on April 8th, 1982 in Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada). She was born to a Dutch Father and a British mother. Her father Bert Smulders (dentist, teacher and painter) immigrated from The Netherlands to Canada in 1969. The name of Cobie's mother (a professional fundraiser) is unknown. At one point, Cobie's parents divorced and her father remarried Luna Osborn. Cobie has 7 siblings (4 sisters and 3 brothers)  an her name (Jacoba)  came from her great aunt. 

Young Cobie wanted to become a marine biologist or a doctor. In recent interviews Cobie talks about how she would love to become a mermaid (as a sort of back-up plan if acting did not work out). Guess we can say Cobie has a fascination for everything ocean. She was raised in White Rock, British Columbia (Canada) and was an active child. Cobie played tennis and football. She also loved swimming and was a member of the Girl Guides of Canada. When Cobie was in high school (at Lord Byng Secondary School), she played in multiple school productions and this piqued her interest in acting professionally. During her time in high school, Cobie was scouted by a modeling agency . While she traveled the world as a model, she also managed to stay in school. Cobie graduated high school with honours in 2000. She didn't really like being a model. What she hated most was walking into a room a being judged physically all of the time. In fact, Cobie hated this aspect so much, that it almost kept her from pursuing an acting career. Luckily she discovered that there was more to acting than just the physical appearance. Being an actor, you actually had to perform and do a good job to get a role. More important even: as an actress she would have a voice.

Cobie's first real acting job was a guest role in the sci-fi show "Jeremiah" in 2002. In the years that followed Cobie had some (minor) roles in TV shows. She was cast as Juliet Drol in ABC's "Veritas: The Quest". Unfortunately the show got canceled after only one season. She also had a recurring ( 4 episode ) role as Leigh Ostin in "The L Word". In 2005, all of Cobie's hard work finally paid off when she landed the role of Robin Scherbatsky in the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother". The show revolves around the (romantic) adventures of Ted Mosby and his best friends: Lilly, Marshal, Barney and Robin. "How I Met Your Mother" became legen........... wait for it ...........dary and Cobie ended up playing Robin for 9 years. After season 1, the showrunners decided to make Robin a Canadian citizen. They also told her about Robin's alter ego popstar Robin Sparkles. Cobie has often expressed her love for the Robin Sparkles storyline. She especially loved shooting the music videos for the songs of the 80s pop star. In our video below you can see her singing "Let's go to the Mall" with a fan at FACTS Spring 2018.

Besides in "How I Met Your Mother" and in the MCU, Cobie also played in a lot of other awesome movies and series. In 2013, she played Emma in the comedy movie "Delivery Man". In 2014 she takes on a role in a DC Comics project, as she voices Wonder Woman in "The Lego Movie". In 2015, Cobie signed on to star alongside Tom Cruise in the upcoming action movie "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back". In the summer of 2015 (before shooting started) Cobie broke her leg, when she fell in her apartment. She was right off of crutches, when she started training for the role. It was really hard work, but she was surrounded by an amazing team of personal trainers. AFter 8 weeks of training, Cobie felt stronger than ever at the start of shooting. From 2017 until 2019, Cobie portrayed Lisa Turner in Netflix' "Friends From College". In 2019, she reprised her role as Wonder Woman (voice) in "The Lego Movie 2". She also got the lead role of private investigator Dex Parios in "Stumptown" (I still can't believe the show got canceled after only one season). In 2022, Cobie took a stroll down memory lane, as she reprised her role as Robin in the season finale of "How I Met Your Father". She also played Simone Bates in 8 episodes of "High School". On a personal level: Cobie married her long time partner Taran Killam in 2012. They have 2 daughters. This is extra special, because there was a time that Cobie feared never having a family of her own. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007. Luckily she beat the disease and in 2009, she and her husband welcomed their first baby named Shaelyn. In 2015, Shaelyn became a big sister, when Cobie gave birth to Janita.

Michael Ironside was born Frederick Reginald Ironside on February 12th, 1950 in Toronto, Ontario (Canada). He is the oldest son of street lighting technician Robert Ironside and housewife Patricia Ironside (née Passmore). Michael has 4 siblings; two brothers ( William and Robin) and two sisters (Beverly and Winnifred). There is not much to be found about Michael's childhood, but we do know that he was a successful arm wrestler in his teenage years. Initially it was Michael's ambition to become a writer and when he was 15 years old, he wrote a play named "Shelter" With this play, he won the first prize in a nationwide university writing contest. He invested the prize money in the production of the play by Toronto's Factory Lab. He attended Riverdale Collegiate Institute in Toronto and won a Senior Writing Award. Michael also attended the Ontario College of Art. He studied at the Canadian National Film Board for three years. During this time he also worked in construction, as a roofer. Despite his love for the writing craft, Michael decided to pursue a career in acting. In the late 70s he started making a name for himself in the Canadian acting industry, but he still kept on working as a roofer to have a back up plan.

His breakthrough came in 1981, with his role as Revok in avid Cronenberg's sci-fi movie "Scanners". In later interviews Ironside talked about how he initially was only hired for a days work (the flashback scene). The movie was rushed into production, while the script wasn't even finished. Cronenberg started rewriting the script and worked out the role of Revok more, thus making Michael's role bigger. Michael received a lot of critical acclaim for the coldness and arrogance he brought to the role of bad guy Revok. "Scanners" became a box office success and Ironside moved to Los Angeles. He took acting lessons from Janine Manatis and she mentored and coached him for over 25 years. Following his impressive role as bad guy Revok, Ironside was equally chilling in his role as Colt Hawker in the 1982 movie "Visiting Hours". In 1984/1985 his American breakthrough came with his role as Ham Tyler in the TV series "V" and "V: The Final Battle". 

In 1986, Michael lands the role of Jester in the blockbuster movie "Top Gun". Initially he read for the role of Viper (eventually played by Tom Skerritt), because originally Jester and Viper were one character.  In 1987, Michael played alongside Nick Nolte in the Western comedy "Extreme Prejudice". His next big movie was with big star Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Total Recall" (1990). Michael played the role of Richter. Last April we attended a Q&A from Mr. Ironside and there he told an amazing story we can't keep from you. While they were shooting the movie in Mexico City, Michael's sister was very sick. She had a cancerous growth in her abdomen, that choked her intestines. Because of this she had to undergo surgery and ended up in the Intensive Care Unit. Every day at lunchtime, Michael would leave set and go to a payphone to call his sister. Arnold Schwarzenegger saw him leaving a few days in a row and asked him about it. When Michael told him about his sister, Schwarzenegger took him to his trailer, where he had a conference phone set up. He told Michael that he could use this phone to call his sister. Michael did so and his sister asked him why all of a sudden the quality of the sound was so much better. Michael told her, he was calling her from Arnold Schwarzenegger's phone. Michael's sister did not believe him, so he put Arnold on the phone. They ended up talking for over an hour. Later on Michael found out that Arnold kept in touch with his sister and helped her through her recovery. 

In 1991, Ironside played the role of Katana in "Highlander II:The Quickening". In later interviews he often tells another amazing story from set. The scene were Katana comes down to earth and lands by going through the roof of a subway cart was initially supposed to be done by a stunt double. That is not how it went down. See, Michael's stunt double had never been to a city (Buenos Aires) where the cocaine was that cheap. He ended up completely hammered and out of his mind, running naked through the streets of Buenos Aires. The guy was arrested by the police and because there was no one who looked like Michael, he had to do the stunt himself. It was quite a big drop, so when he landed safely, Michael stood up and checked his body for injuries. Then he screamed out in joy, because he hadn't broke anything. They ended up keeping that scene in the movie, so the emotion you see are the real deal. Throughout the 90s, Michael can count on a steady stream of jobs and we will only highlight some of them. In 1993, Michael plays the main antagonist Dial in the Warner Bros. movie "Free Willy" and in 1994 he plays the big bad Dugan in "The Next Karate Kid". In 1995, Ironside plays the role of Colonel Stone in "Major Payne". From 1995 until 1996,, he is Captain Oliver Hudson in the sci-fi adventure series "SeaQuest 2032". In 1997, Ironside takes on the role of Jean Rasczak in Paul Verhoeven's cult classic "Starship Troopers". From 1997 until 2000, he voiced Darkseid in "Superman: The Animated Series".

From 2002 on, Ironside has made a name for himself in the gaming industry by lending his name to a character in a very successful gaming franchise. In 2002, he first lends his voice to Sam Fisher in the game "Splinter Cell". From that moment on, he reprised the role in: "Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow" (2004), "Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory" (2005), "Splinter Cell: Essentials" (2006), "Splinter Cell: Double Agent" (2006), "Splinter Cell: Conviction" (2010), "Ghost Recon" (2017) and "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint" (2019). 

Besides this Ironside has played in numerous movies and TV series over the last 25 years. He has a whopping amount of 280+ credits to his name (and still counting). It's impossible to talk about them al in just one article, but if you go to Michael's IMDb page you can see them all. Some of his projects over the last 25 years include: "The Perfect Storm" (2000, as Bob Brown), "Walker Texas Ranger" (2000, as Nolan Pierce), "E.R. (1995-2002, as Dr. William Swift)", "The Machinist" (2005, as Miller). "Young Blades" (2005, as Cardinal Mazarin), "Wolverine and the X-Men" (2008, voice of Colonel Moss and voice of Dr. Brooks), "Terminator: Salvation" (2009, as General Ashdown), "Smallville" (2004-2010, as General Sam Lane), "X-Men: First Class" (2011, as Captain), "Vegas" (2013, as Porter Gainsley), "Transformers Prime" (2013, as the voice of Ultra Magnus), "Children of the Fall (2016, as Sam), "Tokyo Trial" (2017, as Genral MacArthur), "Nobody" (2021, as Eddie Williams) and "Blackberry" (2023, Charles Purdy).

Stanislav Rumenov Yanevski was born on May 16th, 1985 in Sofia, Bulgaria. During his childhood, Stanislav lived in England and in Israel. During his time in Israel, he was 9 or 10 years old. In later interviews he talks about how they used to live along the coast of the Red Sea and he used to have a lot of friends. The weather was nice all year round and even in wintertime the temperatures would be 20 to 25 °C. The summers, however, could be very hot and during the hottest days it was even forbidden to go outside between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. in the afternoon. This was because it could be as warm as 60 °C. In the evenings, Stan went walking by the sea and fishing. When Stanislav was living and studying in England, he attended Mill Hill School. He had no particular acting ambitions and didn't even take drama classes. In facts he was known for his athletic abilities. Stan heard about the auditions for "Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire" at his school. He did not plan on taking part because as mentioned he did not have any acting ambitions at the time. It was casting director Fiona Weir , who spotted Stan while he was talking himself out of being to late to register. She went to the drama teacher of the school and told him that she wanted Stan to come in and audition for the role. The drama teacher talked to Stanislav about it and he decided to take the chance and go.

He did very good and was one of the few that was asked to attend a sort of workshop/callback audition at the studios. The school, however, would not give him permission to go, because of exams, so he missed two appointments. Stan thought he had lost his one chance, because of this, but luckily he got a third chance to come in. Eventually Stan was officially cast as Viktor Krum . Out of the thousands of kids and the more than 600 kids in Sofia that tried out for the first round, it was the Bulgarian kid living in London that landed the part. When they called him to tell him he got the part, he was very cool under it and that was a very atypical reaction (people normally scream and make backflips). Not Stan though...why? He had no idea what he was getting in to. Unlike his sister Stan was not a fan of the "Harry Potter" franchise before he got the role. After his landed the role he watched all the movies and read the books and he could not believe what he had missed. His first day of shooting was in the labyrinth and he says it was terrifying.

Stan recalls that he really looked up to all the iconic actors on set (like Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Richard Gambon and so on). He tried to learn as much as possible from them during his time on set. The movie took 12 months of filming and another 6 to 8 months of post production. Stan mentioned that he tried almost everything to take his wand from set. He hid it in his sleeves, his socks and underwear, but the prop guys were on to him every time. One of his best memories was the premiere with all the fans and the facts that Madonna was sitting right behind him. After his role in "Harry Potter" he landed the role of Miroslav in the Eli Roth movie "Hostel: Part II".  In 2011, Stanislav played the role of Bernhardt in the war movie "Resistance", which also starred Michael Sheen, Tom Wlaschiha and Iwan Rheon. Also in 2011, Stan plays the role of Angel Yakimov in 11 episodes of the Bulgarian TV show "Undercover" ("Pod prikritie"). In 2015, he plays in the Bulgarian movie "The 11th Grade". His most recent acting job is the role of Dr. Feltspan in "Last Man Down" (2021). Besides being an actor, Stanislav is also a motivational speaker. In interviews he often gets the question what he would do if he could use magic. His answer is that first he would take away all evil from the world and stop every conflict. He would also clean the earth and the oceans on it, as well as providing for enough biofood for us all to live long and prosper on this beautiful planet...