In a world of heroes...

Talking to Henry Cavill reminds me of something from my childhood. When I was six, my favourite actor was Michael Keaton. A year later, my allegiance shifted; Keaton was replaced by Warren Beatty. This wasn’t because, as a seven-year-old cinephile, I saw Reds and weighed its considerable merits against Keaton’s work in Mr. Mom. It was because in 1989, Michael Keaton was Batman. And Batman was the best movie ever made — until Dick Tracy came out. That’s how it is for kids. Their affection is intense, fickle, and easily swayed by marketing. Once they find a hero, though, it’s all encompassing. I didn’t just love Batman or Dick Tracy, I loved everything about them, including and especially whoever pretended to be them professionally.

A version of this story appears in the April 2016 issue of Sharp, on newsstands March 23.

In the superhero-saturated culture we live in now, where comic book movies (and comics themselves) are, for better or worse, made with adults in mind, we sometimes forget how exciting this world must be for kids: real superheroes walk the earth; there are so many favourite actors to choose from! And if we’re being honest, even for an adult, sometimes the line between character and actor gets fuzzy. Like the first time you saw Jon Hamm be funny in a non-Don Draper sort of way. It was shocking! Who knew he wasn’t really like Don Draper at all.

Henry Cavill, though, is kind of like Superman. Just look at him. He seems genetically engineered to play the Man of Steel — right down to that damn Cary Grant chin dimple. He’s the Platonic ideal of handsome. Sometimes we need imagination to help us accept an actor in a particular role — some degree of sustained faith. But there is no need for such faith with Henry Cavill and Superman, just a quick policeman’s nod of the head: yup, this checks out.

But it goes beyond looks. Henry Cavill really is like Superman. It’s a kind of method acting — only he’s not walking around with tights under his clothes. He’s found a way to embody the hero wherever he goes, whatever he’s doing, whoever he’s talking to. Of course, that can come with its own set of problems. We always remember our heroes; and if they’re good (and Cavill is a very, very good Superman) we sometimes have trouble forgetting them. Just ask Michael Keaton.

Origin Story

Henry Cavill, wasn’t birthed in some Hollywood lab. For most of us unfamilliar with British television, he came out of nowhere (kind of like Superman!), donned the red and blue jumpsuit and made us all forget, anew, the existence of Brandon Routh. That was in 2012’s Man of Steel. Now, he’s reprising the role in the highly anticipated franchise extension Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

He was born and grew up in Jersey — the one in Britain, not across the river from New York — along with his three brothers. He started acting in high school. He met Russell Crowe, his hero at the time, while working as an extra on Proof of Life, which was filming at his school. Unlike the other kids in the scene who were circling Crowe in silent awe, Cavill approached him. He introduced himself, got some tossed-off advice about acting, and warned his hero — and future co-star — that he better run before the rest of the kids started mobbing him. That’s a story that gets repeated a lot.

After he had been working as an actor for a while, he almost got cast as Superman when McG was going to make it. Then he almost got to be James Bond before it went to Daniel Craig. There are rumours, too, that he lost two roles to Robert Pattinson in a couple other blockbuster franchises in equally frustrating circumstances, but he can’t verify those. Failure before success is an essential part of any origin story.

And while those early close calls certainly affected Cavill, they might not be as integral to his superhero story as this: as a child, Henry Cavill was “on the chubby side,” he says. “I was fat. But I was by no means a beast.” He was big enough to earn the nickname (if anyone earns the insults of cruel, if not terribly original, classmates), Fat Cavill. He didn’t really lose the weight until a director told his mother that if he wanted the role they wanted to give him, he’d have to drop some pounds. Young Cavill worked hard, and lost about 30 pounds in a summer.

Weight can become your nemesis, especially when you lose a lot of it. It’s a constant enemy that is so effective because its strength is your exact weakness. For Cavill, that constant enemy is what keeps him motivated, especially when he’s getting ready to leap entire buildings and go toe-to-toe with Batman.

“I’m hard on myself. I would say that I’m overweight now. People seeing me will always say I’m not. But I’m definitely overweight. It’s an interesting psychology: what is fat? It keeps me in check, though, so it’s a good thing.”

It’s human, of course, to worry about your weight. It’s superhuman to force yourself to become a god every couple of years. It’s something that actors might not get enough credit for, at least from a cultural standpoint. Think about it: when an actor becomes skin and bones, or drinks melted Haagen-Dazs to inflate to NASCAR-fan proportions for a role (and if the role is actually, you know, worthy), they are praised for their dedication to their craft. They are brave, serious. But no one cares when you sculpt your body to believably fill out a set of superhero tights (without the help of moulded rubber): that’s just part of the job, kid.

But Cavill doesn’t mind. He’s realistic about what people expect from him, and his movies. He’s candid. “The superhero genre tends to be action movies. The acting isn’t supposed to be highlighted. It’s overshadowed by spectacle. There are more important things than a finessed performance.”

Which isn’t to say he doesn’t care about his performance. He does. Deeply. He thinks about it seriously. It turns out playing Superman leads to some rare acting challenges. “When you can’t feel pain,” he says, “when we can’t understand that fear response, there’s a fine line between feeling nothing and showing a strong humanity.”

His responsibility is to give a finessed performance, whether people notice it or not. In fact, his job is to give such a finessed performance that people don’t notice it at all. To become Superman. He looks the part, he sounds the part. And he has to act the part, even when he’s not acting for the camera.

Secret Identities and the Fortress of Solitude

The Fortress of Solitude always felt a little like a redundant brand extension to me. Mythology for the sake of mythology. But that’s forgetting who Superman really is. He’s not entirely Clark Kent. But being Superman all the time would be exhausting. After all, that’s an act, too.

From that perspective, every man understands the benefit of having a Fortress of Solitude. That Superman has a place he can retire to, away from the public, away from Clark Kent and his friends, falls squarely on the “man” side of his dichotomous identity.

Like actors, superheroes create their identities, intentionally blurring the line between their public and private selves; they are living symbols. The more an audience buys into a performance, the lonelier it is for an actor. More than artistic satisfaction, the liminal loneliness of the superhero is why actors worry about being typecast, especially as heroes.

When you can’t feel pain, when we can’t understand that fear response, there’s a fine line between feeling nothing and showing a strong humanity.

It’s not that Henry Cavill sounds lonely, exactly. But, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that an actor who has signed on to be Superman for at least the next few years, would feel some reticence about being too public. Consider: Superman is essentially Jesus Christ, in tights, with laser eyes.

It’s one of the challenges writers have dealt with for decades. How do you make surprising stories about someone who is essentially American Righteousness personified, and has been for the past 75 years? You have a hero like Superman descend the gritty path along with all the other superheroes, and you risk losing what makes Superman special: the idealism, the hope, the all-powerful innocence. But, if you keep him a relic of 1950s values, he won’t resonate with anyone past the age of 12. This was why Man of Steel irked some people. Superman would never allow so much of a city to get destroyed! Think of all those innocent lives! Superman doesn’t kill!

“One of the things I learned from that is priorities. You are never going to please everyone. Don’t read the Internet,” he says. Then he makes it clear that he doesn’t always follow his own advice (which is refreshing, because of course celebrities read the Internet). “Some people just want to be negative, no matter what they’re commenting on.” Some fans just want to rage. He knows. He’s followed trolls through different articles, noting the constant flow of negativity. But when a film makes as much money as Man of Steel made, sometimes the only way to assess your performance is to see what people are saying about it.

Henry Cavill exists at the same crux as Superman. And you don’t know whether it’s what qualifies him to be Superman — he’s earnest, decent, unflappably good — or whether it’s a savvy reaction to playing him. He worries about being good, without making a show of it. We want our stars to show personality. To be rogues, bouncing from interview to interview on the full-throttle power of their preternatural charm. Even the stars we admire for being down-to-earth guys best remain so whenever we’re watching. And we’re always watching. Somehow actors need to reflect the characters they portray, otherwise we don’t know how to process their performance. It’s why Ben Affleck, who plays Batman to Cavill’s Superman, has such an uphill struggle donning the cape and cowl — for all his reinvention as a solid director and committed performer, we still know the poker-playing kid from Boston, who once grabbed J.Lo’s ass in a music video, isn’t Batman.

Cavill cares so much about maintaining the plausibility of his Superman that he’s almost aloof. It’s actually heroic. Heroes sacrifice. He talks about the downside of being Superman, that he can’t just do what he wants, he can’t go out drinking, he can’t even get too lazy with his workouts. Think of the children.

But then he says, and he sounds genuinely humble and grateful, that it’s really all worth it. He gets to be Superman. To millions of kids, adults, and trolls on the Internet he is the embodiment of the greatest superhero ever created.

So what if that means staying inside, playing video games anonymously instead of swinging by the pub. He’d probably be playing those video games anyway.

In the next action packed issue!

It will be interesting to see what happens in the future. Having missed the chance once, Cavill still might get to play Bond. He says he’s ready for that now, should it happen. He was only 22 last time, not near old enough to create a finessed spy. You could even call his egregiously underrated The Man from U.N.C.L.E. practice: the man can fill a suit. The man can be mysterious and charming. He’d make a great Bond.

But he’d also make a great actor playing Bond. We’ve seen how his natural earnestness — and impossibly chiseled features — made for a perfect Superman.

How great would it be to see that bent, just a bit. Let him let his hair down a bit. It’s telling that, while other actors seem to complain about the confines of franchises, Cavill has always sought them out. The cynic would say that he’s just chasing the money. Get a cushy gig in a tentpole series of films and you know what you’ll be doing for the next decade. And while he’s not shy about saying he appreciates the money, it doesn’t seem like his main motivation is job security. (That’s what his newly formed production company is for.) No, he wants in on the big franchises because those seem like the most fun, and the best use of his particular, easygoing charisma and talent.

Plus, there’s nothing cushy about playing Superman. That takes godly commitment. And Henry Cavill loves it.