Why Superman Star Dean Cain Walked Away from Millions to Raise His Son Alone
To understand Cain's radical career retreat, one must trace his history long before he put on the red cape. Born Dean George Tanaka in Mount Clemens, Michigan, he never met his biological father, Roger Tanaka. Tanaka walked out on Dean's mother, actress Sharon Thomas, before Dean was born.
When Dean was three, Sharon married film director Christopher Cain. Christopher adopted Dean and his brother Roger, giving them his surname and offering Dean his first real blueprint of parental dedication. Christopher Cain treated the boys as his own, later directing Dean in the 1984 film The Stone Boy.
The wound of that early maternal abandonment by his biological father, however, left an indelible mark on Dean. He watched other children at school with their biological fathers, quietly harboring a pledge: if he ever brought a child into the world, nothing on Earth, not money, fame, or personal ambition, would cause him to walk away. When his son was born in 2000, Cain named him Christopher after the adoptive father who had stepped up to raise him. The legacy he wanted to protect was not a Hollywood marquee; it was the name on his son's birth certificate.
