In the midst of a lot of casting news for superstar actor Henry Cavill , he revealed on a podcast that he was once considered for the leading role of one of the biggest movie franchises of the late ’00s/early ’10s, Twilight.
He admits that it would have been “cool” to play the now-famous vampiric role of Edward, and also tells the story of another role he lost to the same actor.
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It’s been a pretty big week for Henry Cavill.
Not only did he announce that he’d be taking up the role as Superman once again in an unnamed upcoming project, but he also revealed that he’s dropped the role of Geralt of Rivia in Netflix’s The Witcher .
So both exciting and devastating news for his fans.
During a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast , Cavill dropped another interesting casting tidbit about himself, he was author Stephanie Meyer’s first choice to play Edward in the Twilight franchise.
This was documented in a blog post of hers from 2007.
In the post, she described Henry Cavill as her “perfect Edward.”
Of course, as we all know, the role ultimately went to Robert Pattinson, and helped rocket him to fame.
Cavill has no hard feelings about it, though.
When asked if he was jealous at all about the casting change, he replied, “No, not at all, because I didn’t know about the movie. I didn’t know about them wanting to cast me.”
It was a different time, so Meyer’s wish never made it to him until after.
“The internet wasn’t quite as, wasn’t quite the tool that it is now,” he explained, “So, yeah, I only found out afterwards and I was like, ‘Oh, okay, that would have been cool.'”
Meyer was actually pretty devastated.
In her blog post, written after Summit Entertainment got the rights to Twilight, she said “the most disappointing thing for me is losing my perfect Edward.”
“Henry Cavill is now twenty-four-years-old. Let us have a moment of quiet in which to mourn.” Robert Pattinson was only 21 when the first movie was being filmed.
She was actually hoping to get Cavill in for another role.
She said she was “not willing to relinquish Henry completely.”
Her original choice for the character of Carlisle was Charlie Hunnam, however, “Since I hear that Charlie Hunnam refuses to consider scripts which include vampires, I propose that Henry play Carlisle.”
That role ultimately went to Peter Facinelli.
Meyer even noted in her blog that she had no influence over the casting decisions, but that never stopped her from voicing her wishes anyway.
Funnily enough, this wasn’t the first role Cavill had lost to Pattinson.
The two also auditioned to play Cedric Digory in the fourth ‘Harry Potter’ film.
“Yes, I remember that. I definitely auditioned for that one and I did not get it,” Cavill said about the role, “The audition may have gone well, it may have gone terribly, I’m sure someone out there has footage which hopefully is locked away and never will be seen.”
“But yeah, I didn’t get it. It wasn’t right.”
It’s funny how this happened to him twice!
As he said, there’s no beef between him and Pattinson, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles in Hollywood soemtimes.
Besides, Cavill has his fair share of iconic roles under his belt by now, so I can’t imagine him being too broken up about losing Edward when he now plays Superman.
h/t: People
