I gave Banner piercing white eyes so the audience knew he’d passed the point of no return’ … Bill Bixby as the scientist. Photograph: CBS/Getty Images That night, I sat at home trying to figure out how to politely say no. I was reading Les Misérables and had its hero Jean Valjean and the whole fugitive concept in my head. I wondered if I could take a bit of Victor Hugo, Jekyll and Hyde and this ludicrous thing called The Hulk and turn it into a psychological adult drama about a man with hubris, who brings the curse down upon himself in the classic Greek tradition, then has to live with the consequences. The show was an overnight success and gave me incredible fame. David Banner, The Hulk’s human alter ego, encountered a different obstacle every week and that’s why people related to him. They could see he was running from something and we all have those feelings. Every one of us has a little Hulk inside. Kenny Johnson, producer I got a part in Pumping Iron with Arnold Schwarzenegger but I’d never acted before. I moved to California and was training for the 1977 Mr Olympia bodybuilding contest when I got an audition for The Incredible Hulk. They’d started filming the pilot episode with Richard Kiel, who played Jaws in the James Bond movies, but a kid on the set said he wasn’t right and he needed to have big muscles like in the comics. I went for the screen test, got painted green and was asked to show emotion. That came naturally – I knew how Hulk felt – and I got hired. They asked me which Marvel superhero I wanted. I thought: ‘None of them!’