Henry Cavill portrayed Humphrey in the DC Imprint film Stardust and will portray Clark Kent/Superman in the upcoming film Man of Steel.

Significant rolesEdit

• Thomas Aprea in Laguna (2001)
• Albert Mondego in The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)
• Chas Quilter in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2002)
• Stephen Colley in I Capture the Castle (2003)
• Simon Mayfield in Midsomer Murders (2003)
• The Hunter in Red Riding Hood (2004)
• Melot in Tristan + Isolde (2006)
• Humphrey in Stardust (2007)
• Charles Brandon in The Tudors (2007-2010)
• Evan Marshall in Town Creek (2009)
• Randy in Whatever Works (2009)
• Will Shaw in The Cold Light of Day (2011)
• Theseus in Immortals (2011)
• Clark Kent/Superman in The Man of Steel (2012)

QuotesEdit

SupermanEdit

• "Very much so, I'm a fan of the character, and it depends on the script and the director, though not in that order necessarily."
• "All I could think was: Oh, god. They’re going to look at me and go ‘He’s not Superman. Not a chance.’ The actor inside me was going: You’re not ready! You’re not ready!"
• "plenty of comic book research" in order to gather as much information as he can "as to who this man is."
• "looking forward to working with" her, calling his newly announced co-star a "fantastic actress, very talented."
• At this early stage it’s just doing some foundation training. The guys from Gym Jones, Mark Dwight is training me. I’ve done about a month so far of foundation training. Really hard stuff, to get my body used to the real stuff, which is coming up soon. So at the moment it’s just getting my body in the right aesthetic shape.
• Possibly. I don’t know how much I can tell you.
• I think it’s a great way to go, because superheroes themselves are so unrealistic that to add a realism to them just makes them easier to associate with and attaches more directly to a real life imagination.
• “Superheroes came from people having difficult times and their needing imaginary superheroes to fix their problems. This is exactly where mythology came from. It’s the same place, people going through hardship and having these imaginary heroes who would defeat the big bad guy. I believe the original Superman is him flying around and picking up Hitler and bringing him back to the UN. It’s the same thing with mythology. Some bastard king who’s killing everyone and raping all the women, then they have this imaginary demigod hero who goes and kills him, and kills his beasty in the labyrinth and all sorts. It’s all the same thing, just in a different era.”
• “I shall not.” But he did admit Superman was his favorite superhero. “Of course. I’m hardly going to say otherwise anyway.”
• "It's still in development. I haven't tried it on."
• It’s true to the source material. There’s so little I can say about it."
• "It’s basically just a re-imagining and modernization of an iconic character."
• "That’s tough to say. It’s very early days yet. Superman is Superman, after all. There’s only so much of a change you can make to that. It’s certainly, as I say, it’s going to be different, but not so different that it’s unrecognizable. How’s that for an answer?"
• "I'm just picking out as much as I possibly can from the comic book history because obviously it's plastered across there as to who this man is and whatever part of his life you're playing; whatever part of his ultimate journey you're playing, you just need to put in either the building aspects, the building blocks to how he ends up, all those key characteristics that are carried through and so it's just picking up a general idea of what he is and then working from there."
• "Yes, there was a screen test and she's a fantastic actress. Very talented. I'm looking forward to working with her. To be honest, that's a question for the director. But, happenstance. I don't think it matters at all."
• "There’s nothing intentional about my job choices it’s just what jobs I get offered. I often hear about people saying, ‘Oh, you know, so and so’s choice’ and this or that. I think once you get to a certain level of notoriety and fame where you can open a movie then yes, you are offered scripts and stories and get to choose. It’s not like I went on Tudors and said, ‘Ok, next I’m going to play a hero for my campaign for Superman,’ it just all happened to happen as it is."
• "I think on Superman it will be slightly different because I’ve approached it with the experience of Immortals and I’ve said, ‘Look, guys, I’m going to need recovery time and I’m going to need this, I’m going to need that, if possible, please, please.’ And I think the most difficult thing with Superman is going to be making everyone...doing a true justice to the role while reimagining it."
• '"Superman is, I think these days he’s such a universal idea. And yes, he was raised in America as a character but I don’t think the Brits see it any different, they see him as the coolest, biggest and best superhero out there."'
• "As much as I wanted it at a younger age, you get to a certain point where you go, OK, I'm ready for most things now. Back then, you believe you're ready for it. But as soon as it happens, you think that it's a little heavy. I'm glad it's happening now as opposed to any other time."
• "I got the phone call, then ran round the house screaming for 20 minutes, then sat down and thought, Wow, I'm Superman. That's insane. It took me a good long time to get used to the idea. I'm still not used to it," "There's always pressure. The question is whether you allow yourself to be affected by it. Ultimately, it's a destructive force if you're going, Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, and you're panicking. I just go do my job and hope everyone likes it."
• Yes, there was. A while ago now. Must have been four or five years ago, maybe more. McG was working on a script with them, and - I don't know how close I came, I'm not going to repeat rumors and hearsay. I understand it was very, very close. And sadly the movie was cancelled because, I understand, McG didn't want to fly. He certainly had a big fear of flying at the time and I think he's since overcome it. But he wanted to shoot in New York, they wanted to shoot in Australia, for obvious reasons, and he said, "No, I can't do it." These things happen, it's Hollywood.
• “It’s extremely cool. There’s no other feeling like it. They just put it on, I turned around and look in the mirror and you can’t really play it cool – you sort of guffaw and laugh. I thought ‘OK, holy hell, this is real, it’s not a joke anymore. This is it…you’re doing it, you’re right in the middle of it.’”
• “I’m on 5000 calories a day… You’ve got to eat protein first, then a little bit of carbs…you’ve gotta keep your hunger levels going. I’m training two and a half hours a day, pushing my body beyond its normal limits, putting on a lot of muscle mass and just making myself look like Superman.”
• I read as much as I possibly could, so yeah, I mean I just got the DC Comics app, downloaded as much as I could, got as many of the comic books sent to me in the mail as I could, and just immersed myself in the character as much as possible.
• You're going to catch me out on the authors, I'm afraid. I did love Superman: DoomsdayThe Death of Superman, Superman Returns, The New Krypton Saga especially, Red Son. Red Son was cool because it had the alternate story line. A lot of them I love, but recently, the one I read most recently was The New Krypton Saga, and I really enjoyed that. And there you have it folks, let the script tie-in speculations fly. Also, notice the newly dyed locks? He's starting to look more and more like America's favorite boy scout.
• "Doing an American accent is about exercising the muscles in your throat and your mouth. Sometimes it can sound great for a long period of time, sometimes your inflection is wrong. It all depends. As long as you've got a professional watching over you saying, "You did this wrong, you did that wrong.." it can be made to seem effortless. But you still get days when it just seems to stick in your mouth."
• "I've been told I can be very good at it..but I know I've been very bad at it in the past!"
• "There’s no better feeling than to get that call. Actually, I was at home when the phone rang. It was an unknown number and I ignored it, then looked down and saw it was Zack Snyder. I was like ‘Oh my God!’ and he’d hung up at that stage. Fortunately, he called back."
• "It’s important to do the role justice. There are a lot of people relying on me to do this well. I gladly accept that responsibility, and it’s a great one to have because it’s a wonderful opportunity. I don’t let the pressure get to me because that’s going to hinder my performance and therefore, let people down. So I choose to ignore the pressure side of it and focus on doing justice to Superman."
• "I can't talk about that too much. I don't want to be giving away the idea of the film too early, but Amy is a great actress, very professional, a pleasure to work with..."
• "The tricky thing is there is a sense of awe and also a sense of being frightened."
• "It's not a dark movie by any means. Past representations of the character have been quite light... This is a more realistic view of the character, while still maintaining the very unrealistic, or potentially unrealistic features of an alien with superpowers."
• "This is a Superman for a modern age. It's not betraying anything that Superman is, but it is grounding everything in reality. It's the story of this incredible being who can do incredible things, but whom we can associate with. Because he's gone through troubling stuff and had to make tough choices."
• "I managed to piece together this character, maintaining that bass-line and having all the differences and nuances that our script adds, but this is our own thing. Stand-alone. It's about Superman, but we're not copying from any one comic in particular. And that's a good thing, because it's an original story."
• "It was totally embarrassing, I wasn't in training. I wasn't feeling fit or looking good, and you put on a Lycra suit and it does not help it. I just thought, OK, I’m not getting this job. I’m fat Superman. It’ll be some really in-shape dude that when they step out they look amazing."
• "Chris Nolan wasn't there during the production itself, although I'm not sure how much work was done behind the scenes. I'm sure Zack had a phone call or two with him, but this is definitely Zack's baby. He was the man in charge, and we created the character together, as opposed to having too many outside influences."
• "It's a collaborative process and Zack wants us to talk to him about stuff and work with him on his ideas. If you say, 'how about I do this,' he'll say 'I don't know if I like it yet, but give it a shot.' "
• "Again, it comes back to the human element; because he's alone and there's no one like him. That must be incredibly scary and lonely, not to know who you are or what you are, and trying to find out what makes sense. Where's your baseline? What do you draw from? Where do you draw a limit with the power you have? In itself, that's an incredible weakness."