Henry Cavill

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

 

  1. Robert Pattinson, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2004.      And so…enter Pattinson as Cedric Diggory. With Edward Cullen to come…
  2. Tom Welling, The Fog, 2004.     Before TV’s young Superman became the fishing-boat skipper hero, the producers (one, Debra Hill, dying before the film did) also saw a dozen actors. Including the  future Supie.
  3. Christian Bale, Batman Begins, 2004.
  4. Daniel Craig, Casino Royale, 2005.
  5. Brandon Routh, Superman Returns, 2005.
  6. Robert Pattinson, Twilight, 2008.     Cavill was novelist  Stephanie Meyer’s first choice for Edward – before some 5,000 auditions. However, oncethe budget money was finally in place, he was too old at 25 to play 17. Just as he was too young to be 007…  but fine for Superman, just as Pattinson eventually became The Batman, 2021.
  7. Peter Facinelli, Twilight, 2008.…So the Texan director Catherine Hardwickeoffered him Dr Carlisle Cullen, by which time Cavill was Charles Brandon in The Tudors, TV, 2007-2008.
  8. Ryan Reynolds, Green Lantern, 2010.       This is getting to be a bad habit. First he loses Bruce, Clark, Edwards and James, now the super-powered ring as Hal Jordan in 007 director Martin Campbell’s “DC Comics’ tentpole movie” for 2010. And it had been Campbell who saw him as a future 007. Also in the loop: Jack Black, Bradley Cooper, Michael Fassbender, Nathan Fillion, Brian Austin Green, Emile Hirsch, Jared Leto, Eddie Murphy, Chris Pine, Justin Timberlake, Sam Worthington. “I was actually very close to throwing in the towel before the Bond screen test happened,” said Cavill. “The test kept me in the industry…. Plan B was joining the armed forces.” His day would surely come. And it did. He won Superman in 2011.
  9. Aaron Taylor-Jones, Godzilla, 2013.      Superman v Godzilla  – what a dumb idea!  (OK, slightly  better than Matthew Broderick (!) in  1997). But then another Hollywood attempt as Godzillaring was also a lame notion. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Caleb Landry-Jones, Scoot McNairy were also in the mish-mash for Lieutenant Ford Brody  (a nod to Roy Scheider’s Jaws sheriff?).  Brody was won by the English guy from Anna Karenina… and Kiss-Ass 2!   UK director Gareth Edwards said he got all his first choices for his second feature. It won him his third, the superb  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, 2015.
  10. Armie Hammer, The Man From UNCLE, 2013.      Warner’s new Superman and Joel Edgerton were in the mix for the Russian agent Illya Kuryakin.  Hammer won – and was due opposite Tom Cruise’s Napoleon Solo in 2013, Then, Cruise quit to prep his own ex-TV series franchise, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Hammer stayed put as Cavill went Solo.

  11. Alexander Skarsgård, The Legend of Tarzan,  2014.    As if Superman and Napoleon Solo were not enough, Warner took a long look at Cavill (and fellow Brits Tom Hardy and  Charlie Hunnam)  before deciding on  the Swedish Skarsgård. Plus, in  the Olympic tradition of the great Johnny Weissmuller and passable Buster Crabbe, the Maryland swimmer Michael Phelps – history’s most decorated Olympian, with 23 gold medals from five Games,  during 2000-2016. The other American  in the jungle mix was Matt Barr, a  Hunnam  lookalike from Texas – and Kevin Costner’s Hatfields & McCoysmini-series. The first 21st Century ape-man. flopped when finally released in the summer of 2016.
  12. Charlie Hunnam, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, 2015.       On Warner shelves almost as long as Justice League, David Dobkins’ Arthur & Lancelot, churned into Guy Ritchie’s Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur as the first of a possible sextet (but there are no Hobbits!). During which time, the guy pulling the sword from the stone was to be Sam Claflin, Dominic Cooper, Colin Farrell, Kit Harrington, Liam Hemsworth, the Scottish Hans Matheson (from Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, 2009), Jim Sturgess or Benjamin Walker. Then, Hunnam promised director Ritchie he’d recover his Sons of Anarchy weight loss and then some. Furthermore, dude, he was ready to rumble with the his final rivals, Cavill (Ritchie’s Man From UNCLE) and Jai Courtney. “Bring ’em both in here. I’ll fight ’em both. The one who walks out the door gets the job!” 
  13. Dominic Cooper, Stratton, 2016.    Hunting a biochemical  terrorist cell  sounds like a job for Superman. And so it was until Cavill flew away- five days  before shooting started!   Cooper was rushed in to take on the titular action hero, based on the books by Duncan Falconer, ex-member of the British SBS special forces unit.  This is the reason why Cooper was never a Bond candidate – not even in the UK tabloids.

 

 

 Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls:  13