Twilight author Stephanie Meyer had the perfect actor for Edward Cullen in mind before a then-unknown Robert Pattinson was cast in the part. She thought future Man of Steel actor Henry Cavill would be the best actor for the role, but he was too old to play the part in 2007. Cavill, who was 24 at the time, recently said it “would have been cool” to play the character.
Back in July 2007, when Meyer announced that Summit Entertainment picked up the screen rights to her Twilight books, she was sad that Cavill couldn’t play the part. She included him on her dream casting list years earlier, but he was too old to play a vampire in a 17-year-old’s body by 2007. “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,” Meyer wrote on her blog in 2007.
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In a recent episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Cavill said he did not know this until after the first Twilight movie was made. He felt no rivalry with Pattinson. “Not at all because I didn’t know about the movie,” the Enola Holmes star said. “I didn’t know about them wanting to cast me and the internet wasn’t quite the tool that it is now and so I only found out afterward. I was like, ‘Oh okay, that would have been cool.’”
Unsurprisingly, Meyer did not dream of Pattinson playing Edward because he was practically an unknown in 2007. His biggest role at that point had been a supporting part in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as Cedric Diggory. His scenes were also deleted from his first movie, 2004’s Vanity Fair. Instead, Meyer’s other dream options for Edward included future The Sandman star Tom Sturridge and future The Perks of Being a Wallflower star Logan Lerman.
Cavill might not have led The Twilight Saga, but he’s got plenty of other major roles on his resume. His biggest is Superman, which he played in Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Justice League. He returned as the character in the Black Adam post-credits scene and is set to lead another movie in the future. Cavill also plays Sherlock Holmes in Netflix’s Enola Holmes movies and hung out with Tom Cruise in helicopters in Mission: Impossible – Fallout.
Cavill also stars in Netflix’s The Witcher, playing the lead role, Geralt of Riva. Late last month, the streamer announced that Cavill will be replaced by Liam Hemsworth for the fourth season. Cavill hasn’t said why he’s leaving the project, but it’s possible that his re-commitment to Superman may be to blame. The Witcher fans will still get one more season of Cavill as Geralt though since Season 3 will not be released until next year.
