Dean Cain may be remembered for his portrayal as Lois Lane in “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” but he is first and foremost a father. Cain became a dad in the early 2000s, and his life was never the same again. Cain enjoys parenting his “favorite human,” as he frequently proclaims on Instagram. “Best part of my day every day,” he captioned the January Instagram image. Cain spends a lot of time flying as an actor. But it doesn’t mean he can’t spend time away from his son.
Dean Cain likes bringing Christopher everywhere, which has become a running gag. Cain shared many photos of Christopher riding airport stairs between 2017 and 2018. “ANOTHER day, another airport.” “Is this dude following me…?” he captioned one, which showed Christopher mean-mugging in the background. Cain prioritizes his son’s pleasure above anything else.
This includes the cleanliness of his house.”You know the expression, ‘Momma says don’t play ball in the house?’ “Well, we play,” he explained to People in 2014. “We chase each other, and you can walk on virtually any piece of furniture.” Dean Cain’s devotion to Christopher is undeniable, but the former “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” host’s parenthood adventure did not begin as he had intended. Cain was entangled in a custody fight for the first decade of his son’s existence, which came to define not only his job as a parent but also his status as an actor.
Dean Cain’s ex accused him of being an unfit parent
Dean Cain had a string of high-profile romances throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Cain moved on from Brooke Shields to beach volleyball star Gabrielle Reece and then to country singer Mindy McCready, with whom he was briefly engaged. But it wasn’t until 1999, when he met Spanish “Playboy” model Samantha Torres, that his life truly changed. Cain and Torres welcomed Christopher in June 2000, despite the fact that the couple had separated before she learned of the pregnancy, according to People in October 2003.
When their son was 18 months, Cain and Torres ignited what would become a vicious — or “disgusting,” as he put it — custody battle. Cain initially asked for joint custody, but Torres was dead set on preventing it from happening. Instead, she asked for sole custody on the grounds that Cain had a substance abuse issue, which he vehemently denied. To prove he was fit to be a parent, Cain agreed to take frequent drug tests throughout the proceedings. “I’m better at being a father than I have been at anything else in my entire life,” he told People.
Dean Cain and Torres were given shared custody by the court in May 2003. But that’s not the end of it. The back-and-forth continued until Cain was granted full custody of Christopher in 2011. Being a full-time father to his son was a blessing, but it also had long-term implications for Cain and his profession.
Dean Cain gave up lucrative deals to be a single father.
While Dean Cain enjoys being a father, raising Christopher alone meant he couldn’t devote as much time to acting. “It had an unfathomable impact on my career,” he said on Fox News in September 2022. Cain has had to be picky about the parts he takes on since the custody battle began. “For the last 17 years, I haven’t taken a film that shoots for longer than three weeks,” he told Bright Lights Film Journal in 2018.
The exception was “Out of Time,” which he filmed when he still shared custody with Samantha Torres and she agreed to let him be away for longer. “There have been tremendous projects that I would have loved to have taken — ‘Band of Brothers’ [2001] was one — but I just couldn’t do them. I wasn’t available to do them,” he explained. While Cain wonders what could have been, he doesn’t regret his decision. “As soon as I was presented the choice, it was like, ‘I’m going to be a dad,” he told Fox News.
Cain’s past influenced his decision to prioritize his son. Cain was actually born Dean Tanaka, but he never met his biological father. He was 4 when his mother married Christopher Cain, who adopted him and his brother. “I know how important that was for my life,” he detailed. “Nothing in my life has been as big a factor as having my father there to raise me.”
