Henry Cavill

Henry Cavill was born in St. Helier, Jersey in 1983, and spent a decade as the near-miss guy. He was a teenage Albert Mondego in The Count of Monte Cristo in 2002, a supporting lord in Stardust, a lead on The Tudors, and Theseus in Immortals, always visibly a star and never quite in the film that would confirm it. Man of Steel finally did in 2013, and he played Superman across the DC films from then until 2023, through Batman v Superman, Justice League and a pair of late cameos.

The Superman years were oddly unproductive for him. The films kept rebuilding themselves around him, and the role, as written, gave him grief and posture rather than personality. What the decade did establish is his physical presence, which is the most old-fashioned thing about him: he moves like a man built for a widescreen frame, and directors who understand that give him action you can actually follow, the bathroom fight and the arm-cocking reload in Mission: Impossible Fallout being the obvious case.

The better discovery is that he is funny. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. casts him as a preening thief-turned-spy and lets him play vanity as a joke he is in on, which remains the most enjoyable thing he has done. The Enola Holmes films use the same lightness for a warm, slightly dim Sherlock, and The Witcher spent three seasons on a fantasy lead who mostly grunts, which he made watchable through sheer commitment. He is a better comic actor than his casting has generally allowed.