Henry Cavill

Henry Cavill

Henry Cavill portrayed Humphrey in the DC Imprint film Stardust and Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman in Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League and will reprise the role in Justice League: Part Two.

Significant roles

• 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)
• Napoleon Solo in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Quotes

DC Extended Universe

• "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."
• "I think it would be really interesting with the age-old Batman/Superman conflict because they are two different sides of the same coin and their methods are entirely different. And I think it would actually make for an interesting story as to why, first of all, they were going head to head and how. I think that would make a great story. Who knows, I’m sure there’s all sorts of ideas being thrown around at Warner Bros right now."
• "Kal-El is different from other people because he is an alien. That makes him feel lonely and distressed, almost petrified. Growing up being so very different and not knowing where he comes from or who he really is should be scary, and we wanted to explore the difficulties that he was going through in various situations."
• "Personally, I had no interaction with Chris ... I did not know him until this year. When we were filming, he was doing the last Batman. But Zack is my reference and who was responsible. It’s his baby and I’m sure it’s the most realistic movie he has ever filmed."
• "I don’t let the pressure get to me because that would have hindered my performance and I didn’t want the fans being disappointed. If you transfer that anxiety elsewhere, it may actually help you, and how it helped me in this case was in the gym, with me thinking ‘First things first, I have to look like Superman’."
• "There were four months of training before the filming starts when I trained for about one-and-a-half hours every day. The goal was to gain muscle mass, so I ate a lot — about 5,000 calories a day. My diet at that time was of one-third carbs, one-third fats and one-third protein in every single meal, and I was having thousand-calorie shakes as well. As I like to eat, it wasn’t hard for me. But after gaining weight, I had to outline my shape to look like a bodybuilder and you could see the muscle structure under the suit. That lasted four weeks when I ate protein only. The training itself was really difficult. I had my personal trainer, Mark Twight. He knows how far to push someone to their limit, and if that was their real limit or it was the limit they believed in their head."
• "The suit? When it is cold, you are cold, and when the weather is hot, you are warm. It is consist of one piece and is complicated to put on. When we were filming, it was waiting for the breaks to go to the WC, but sometimes you cannot."
• "In a darkened editing bay on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California, Man of Steel footage rolls on a 70-inch screen. Finally, here's the director Zack Snyder's long-awaited, top-secret Clark Kent: swarthy and muscular, working at a bar on a lonely stretch of highway. No Brooks Brothers. No glasses. No Daily Planet. Instead, Kent, in jeans and a henley, is a drifter, bouncing from job to job, not yet ready to assume his true calling, not yet given the chance. Kent finds work far from any Metropolis. Among deckhands. And roughnecks. And wasted truckers who grope innocent women while he buses tables. He tells them to stop. They get aggressive, tossing beer, throwing punches. One connects and he takes it. Kent walks away, seething. He later lashes out, unleashing his long-pent-up wrath on inanimate aluminum and steel. This is Clark Kent struggling, grappling with the possibility of keeping his powers secret forever."
• "My version of Superman, is essentially of a guy who has spent his whole life alone."
• "But I cannot wait for this movie to come out. The studio just showed me the completed cut. I literally asked to watch it twice in a row. I'm so excited. I just want to show it to the world."
• "It's a story and as an actor, you're going to find that in a story, there's lots of emotions. It's a story first and there is an emotional being at the center of the film first, Superman just happens to have these incredible abilities. It's not about 'How did you balance action and emotion', you don't balance the two. You need them both and this is what makes this movie different. It's not just 'Yeah, ok. Superhero, whatever. Wow that's cool, save me superhero.' It's 'Oh, wait a second, there's an alien, here! There's an alien here for thirty-three years, and you can't hurt him. I don't know how I feel about this.' But then you have to ask how Superman feels about people saying that about him."
• "As an actor I spent from the age of 17 travelling the world trying to find work and to find out if I was even right for this kind of job. So trying to find my space in this industry was very much the same kind of thing that Clark Kent experienced. Over time we become more comfortable in our own skin and so we discover more about ourselves."
• "I was wandering around these studios many, many years ago hoping to be part of the Superman story and then the movie never happened. And now, years later, I get the opportunity again and because I had been there before I had a bit more of an insight and I feared it less."
• "I'm sure he'll be fantastic above all else! And as a filmmaker, he's got his own style, you know. He's not copying anyone else. And he's also sort of being tenacious in his career. He's had ups followed by downs, and now he's very up again. I think that requires and shows a very special strength of character. And it's something which I enjoy working with because jobs like this require strength of character. They require a dedication to the work and belief in oneself, and Ben has that, clearly."
• "There's one obvious reference which is now particularly obvious because of our next installment, involving Batman. We see Bruce Wayne Enterprises on the satellite in space. We also see some reference to LexCorp, I actually have no further knowledge of this next story but there's a good chance Lex is going to be introduced soon or at some stage. What really intrigued by was Dr. Emil Hamilton's connection to S.T.A.R. Labs, Cyborg I think would make a wonderful character and an incredible bridge between both superhumans and humanity in a different way than Batman. So I don't know where he's going to come in or if he's going to come in but that's one I'm particularly excited about."
• "The next instalment, as we all know, is involving another rather important character, and i’m looking very forward to that interaction, because ultimately they’re two sides of the same coin. How they interact, how they clash and how they ultimately aim towards the same goal is going to be an interesting relationship, and I look forward to playing that with Ben especially."
• "We have about 6 months of pre-production. And the pre-production is spent entirely on me training and eating all the right things. To get to a certain size, you have to eat a lot and you always put a little bit of fat on - that's the ‘mass building’ phase. And just before we start shooting, we lean down to get to the ‘suit’ phase and then for shirtless stuff - throughout the shoot - we lean down even further."
• "There’s plenty of time for individual Superman sequels. He’s a tough character to tell. People like the darker vigilante. I think it speaks to the human psyche more easily rather than the god-like being that we can’t really understand. [But] Once we have a more expansive universe we can delve more into the character of Superman and hopefully tell more stories."
• "What happens there is one of Bruce’s buildings gets destroyed and he’s trying to save all the people inside the building and he can’t. So he is this angry person who fears what Superman may do. Why are they just going to trust this super-powered alien? What if he does decide to turn against us? He’s found himself in a place of harboring a tremendous amount of rage for Superman. So it’s how he got there, and what that’s done to him, and what that’s done to people around him like Alfred, who are, I think, very scared and worried for him. It’s something that’s interesting and new."
• "The reception of my first Superman movie, from what I’ve read, was fairly mixed. Everyone I’ve spoken to enjoyed the movie, but not unlike if you’re going to meet a stranger in the street, they’re not going to badmouth you to your face. There’s no intentional move, I don’t think, in Batman v. Superman to address any issues that people had with Man of Steel. It’s just a continuation of that storyline and they continue to develop that world and introduce new characters."
• "I think maybe people may look down on some popular-culture stuff, but they’re actually very complicated and interesting characters. Superman especially, he’s just wonderfully rich and one of those things, for me, that’s just enjoyable to play. There’s so far you can go with it; if you really, really delve deep into the character, there’s so much you can do. It’s just about exploring it within the vehicles and finding what you want to do. He’s going to have some very interesting character development in this one."
• "He’s more used to this gig, doing his best to save as many lives as he can. He is no longer frantic. He’s no longer a wet behind the ears kind of superhero."
• "He doesn’t agree with his form of justice. For this farm boy, who tries to do things the right way, justice at any cost is not something he can come to terms with."
• "He is the human side of the character, but there is often this idea that Clark and Superman must be so different. He can only get away with wearing the glasses so much. If he's drawing attention to himself by being clumsy, that's not going to work."
• "It's not about one on one. Of course Superman is going to win. But it's deeper than that. It's nore that these two great powers exist and are actually trying to acheive the same thing, but in such different way..."
• "Wе sее thе rеаctiоn оf Lеx Luthеr, аnd thе rеаctiоn оf Bаtmаn. Аnd thе rеаctiоn оf thе whоlе wоrld tо this gоdlikе bеing."
• "Clark knоws whо this Lеx Luthоr chаp is, but hе cеrtаinly wоuldn’t аssumе thаt hе hаd аny bаd intеntiоns."
• "I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a survivor’s guilt. I mean, that’s a different kind of thing because he’s above the threat. I think the most difficult thing for him at this stage of the story is that he has just come to terms with the fact that he is really, really quite powerful and he hasn’t found any major vulnerabilities yet, and despite this, despite the enormous power that he has, he still cannot do everything, and he really struggles with that. It’s not just a quick, “Okay, I get it. I can’t save everyone.” That takes a long time to work out."
• "I think that may have been part of the master plan all along. When it comes to the major story stuff I can’t really speak on that, because that was above my paygrade. What I can speak of is the idea of Superman, especially when the finger is pointed at collateral damage in the first movie. I mean, we’re talking about a greenhorn."
• "I think the offbeat stories are great, and I read Red Son in particular before I did Man of Steel, to get an idea of the baseline of the character because despite the fact that it’s offbeat and he’s grown up in a completely different environment, the character is still, at it’s very core, the same thing, and I love that. I think what’s important now is to tell a story which is dedicated to sharing the same character in the comic books in the cinematic universe, and then after that’s been established, then we can start exploring some more of the offbeat stuff."
• "The comic book was fantastic, and I think that was a poignant moment in comic book history. Superman lives in all of us, and it’s the example he sets. And he never goes anywhere as long as we believe in him."
• "Even if Marvel didn’t exist, we’d struggle. There was a style they were going for, an attempt to be different and look at things from a slightly different perspective, which hasn’t necessarily worked. Yes, it has made money but it has not been a critical success; it hasn’t given everyone that sensation which superheroes should give the viewer. … I feel like now the right mistakes have been made and they haven’t been pandered [to], and we can start telling the stories in the way they need to be told. It is even better to come back from a mistake or stylistic error into the correct vein because it will make it seem that much stronger. Wonder Woman was the first step in the right direction."