Popverse's top stories of the day

• DC's original Green Lantern headlines 2025 Pride anthology, alongside Harley Quinn, Green Arrow Connor Hawke, Midnighter and Apollo, and the Question
• MEMBERS ONLY: Watch the 20th anniversary Serenity reunion panel from Seattle's ECCC 2025 with Nathan Fillion, Summer Glau, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, and Sean Maher
• ECCC '25 Recap: Greetings from Seattle's Emerald City Comic Con... Sincerely, Popverse

Let's face it, fighting a giant red Hulk is hard. Dating can be even harder.

Anthony Mackie is the star of the biggest movie in theaters right now with Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World. He's been a movie star for the past 23 years from 2002's 8 Mile to today, but became a serious cinematic heavyweight after 2008's The Hurt Locker and then became the MCU's Sam Wilson beginning with 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier. But here now as a 46-year-old single man, Mackie says "the idea of dating is really hard" when you're famous.

“How do you trust someone? How do you put yourself in a position to be vulnerable? How do you know what someone really [wants] from you when all you want is to just be loved and appreciated? What does that look like?” he says rhetorically to People's Eric Andersson. 

Now, Mackie hasn't been single this whole time. In 2014 he married his childhood sweetheart, and they have four children together - but they divorced in 2018. A lot has changed in the dating world since in the time since. You won't find Mackie on Tindr, Bumble, Grindr, or the like.

"I don't even know how it works," Mackie said recently on the talk show Sherri. "Heart you, heart me, then what does the heart mean? How do I get you from the heart? What do I do, swipe? How do I find you? I'm just old school. I'd rather bump into you, say hello, talk to you, ask for your number, go out on a date, spend 15 minutes with you, and then find out if you're crazy."

Although he prefers a casual meeting for prospective dates, he tells People that he has social anxiety due to being a known person.

"I'm not a big attention person. I appreciate the support. I appreciate the idea of people recognizing me for my work, if nothing else,” he says. “But social anxiety is a real thing. And because of that, I run away and hide. I go to my places where I know people and they take care of me. And I just sit in the corner and put an umbrella over my head."

"I stay at home," Mackie says on Sherri. "It's hard when you're a public figure because anything can be misconstrued and taken out of place."

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

• The MCU needs Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik in it (and not just for the X-Men connection)
• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Marvel Studios has accidentally created a new Phase that predates Phases 1 - 6: the MCU Phase Zero
• Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak
• The biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows
• Donald Trump is the landlord for Marvel's House of Ideas
• Marvel Studios swapping out Doctor Doom for Kang offers the chance to jettison the Multiverse Saga
• What Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is saying (and not saying) about the MCU X-Men franchise says a lot about the future of the Mutant Saga
• If Marvel is going to bring Loki back for Secret Wars, it's time to give him an upgrade
• In 2021, Sony's boss said people won't miss Spider-Man in its Spider-adjacent movie. Turns out, they do.