Aaron Stanford
Now, this was a super strange casting decision. Pyro is largely a C-grade supervillain, while Aaron Stanford was a rising star at the time. When he first appeared in X2, the 12 Monkeys actor had the perfect look and was the right age to portray a younger Ragin’ Cajun, Gambit.
Sadly, Stanford received a muddled arc where he was an X-Man and Bobby Drake/Iceman’s BFF, then decided to join the Brotherhood of Mutants because he was an angry teenager. His motivations were unclear, but by the time the mess known as X-Men: The Last Stand came around, I don’t think anyone really knew what was going on anymore and stopped caring.
Still to this day, one has to wonder why Bryan Singer was reluctant to feature Gambit in his original trilogy. I mean, we had Pyro – and honestly, how many of us actually even care about this character?