Henry Cavill’s Body, Role by Role: 25 Pounds for Superman, One Dry Day for Geralt and a Boot Before Highlander

Updated October 26, 2026

Henry Cavill has never told anyone what he weighs as Superman, and when Details pressed him for its July 2013 issue, he explained the refusal rather than the number: “It’s modesty. . . but I also don’t want to invite that debate: ‘Henry weighs this, so he’s the perfect Superman.'” What he has given out, over fifteen years, is differences. Twenty-five pounds between Immortals and the start of Superman, by his own count at Comic-Con in July 2011. A litre and a half of water, then half, then none, before a shirtless day on The Witcher. A left leg in a boot in October 2025, four months before Highlander finally started shooting.

This page puts those differences in order, role by role, with the person who said each one and when: Cavill, his trainers Mark Twight, Michael Blevins and Dave Rienzi, and the production dates. The headlines usually run a figure from a fitness blog next to his name. He has never confirmed one, so those figures sit in the Rumor / Reality box, not in the text.

2005: the Bond screen test, “looking a little chubby there, Henry”

The first body note in Cavill’s file is a director’s. He auditioned for Casino Royale in a towel, a nod to Sean Connery in From Russia With Love, and told Men’s Health UK in November 2019 what Martin Campbell said on the day: “I probably could have prepared better. I remember the director, Martin Campbell, saying, ‘Looking a little chubby there, Henry.'” His conclusion was generous: “I didn’t know how to train or diet. And I’m glad Martin said something, because I respond well to truth. It helps me get better.” The part went to Daniel Craig.

The towel episode had a prologue. At boarding school, he told Details, “I was fat. I was Fat Cavill,” and the weight came off when work demanded it: at 17, cast in The Count of Monte Cristo, he “lost one and a half stone [21 pounds].” Everything that follows is a man who, by his own account, likes food being paid to go without it.

2011: Immortals, “9 to 5, at one stage, with the training”

Tarsem Singh’s Greek fantasy was the first job Cavill did mostly without a shirt, and he has described it as a shock rather than a triumph. “It was my first experience working on a movie and having my shirt off for most of the damn time,” he told Men’s Health UK in 2019. “It’s very emotionally taxing. When you add the lack of food and the pressure on top of that, it’s tough.” The trainer who ran the cast, Ricky Blanchard, told Coach (March 16, 2012) that Cavill “turned up for filming already in pretty decent shape” for the fight work.

Cavill’s own description of the hours came at Comic-Con on July 23, 2011, in a joint interview with Singh published by Showbiz Junkies: “The physical training was extensive and exhausting. I think I was doing 9 to 5, at one stage, with the training.” He had already started on Superman, and he put the gap between the two bodies in one sentence: “I’m 25 pounds heavier now than I was in Immortals. That is enough said, really.” It is the only before-and-after number he has attached to himself in anything reviewed here, and it is a difference, not a weight.

2013: Man of Steel, 5,000 calories and “we didn’t care” what

Mark Twight, the Gym Jones founder who was at the same time taking 40 pounds off Russell Crowe for Jor-El, described the Superman build to ABC News in June 2013 in two phases: first about 20 pounds added on 5,000 calories a day, then the long part. Asked what Cavill ate, Twight said, “We didn’t care. If he decided, ‘Look, I can get an extra thousand calories by eating pizza, I’ll do it.'” ABC put the training at two-hour sessions five or six days a week for 11 months; Men’s Health UK, looking back in 2018, called it a six-month mass-building regime, and Twight’s own 20 pounds is five short of the 25 Cavill quoted at Comic-Con. Nobody has reconciled the numbers, including the two men who gave them.

Cavill’s version, given to Entertainment Tonight at the New York premiere on June 10, 2013, was about the breaks: “after one particularly harsh leaning phase, I did a whole apple pie, a tub of ice cream and an enormous pizza.” The only measurement he would concede, in the Details interview, was comparative: “I was a lot bigger as Superman. [But] I’m not eating 5,000 calories a day anymore!”

2016: Batman v Superman, “the mass build is the fun part”

The second Superman was built with Michael Blevins, the coach Coach magazine credited, and this time Cavill narrated it himself. On February 5, 2016 he posted a shirtless photo with the caption “Warm up phase for Superman training started today! Posting this pic to set myself a minimum goal…and force myself to actually keep going haha! @gritandteeth”, gritandteeth being Blevins’s handle. Coach published the four-phase programme on February 22, 2016.

Cavill’s assessment of the phases is the most honest thing an actor has said about this kind of work. “The mass build is the fun part,” he told Coach. “You get to eat a lot, and you’re lifting heavy weights. You feel really good because you’ve got big numbers going on the plates. But you’re always aware that you’ll have to eat less and start breathing more in order to show the muscles and the striations. It creeps up on you. That’s the less fun part.”

2019: The Witcher, a litre and a half, then half, then none

Mission: Impossible – Fallout had let him off the cycle (“there is inevitably a shirtless scene in a Superman movie,” he told the Yorkshire Post on July 27, 2018; “on this one I didn’t have to do that”). Geralt of Rivia put him straight back on it. On The Graham Norton Show in December 2019 he explained the water schedule before a shirtless scene: “On the first day you’ll have a litre and a half, the second day half a litre and the third day no water and you’ll shoot on the fourth.” He corrected the headline before it was written: “It’s not no water for three days.” The point, he said, was that “it makes your skin really thin, so it sits on the muscles,” and the cost was that “you get to the point, on the last day, where you can smell water nearby.” He called himself “the most miserable person on the planet” for the duration, and he offered it as a description, not a method.

The daily method was new too. Dave Rienzi, Dwayne Johnson’s coach, had him do 20 minutes of fasted cardio each morning, and Cavill told Men’s Health UK why he liked it: “It’s only 20 minutes, so it’s not massively exhausting. … My heart rate’s at 125-135bpm, so it has a really good effect on fat-loss.” His verdict, in the same interview: “Out of all the things I’ve done in the past, I think the fasted cardio stuff is actually working best for me. I’m in the best shape of my life.” He was 36.

2022: the cape, returned

The body stayed, the job did not. On December 14, 2022, weeks after the studio had him announce a Superman comeback in October, Cavill posted a statement on Instagram that Today quoted the next morning: “I will, after all, not be returning as Superman. After being told by the studio to announce my return […] prior to their hire, this news isn’t the easiest, but that’s life. The changing of the guard is something that happens. I respect that.” He closed with “It’s been a fun ride with you all, onwards and upwards.” Nothing in it about the body, which is in character.

2025 to 2026: Highlander, a boot, and “in enduring, grow strong”

The sword film was supposed to roll in September 2025. On September 12 the PA news agency reported that Cavill had been injured in pre-production and that filming would likely resume in 2026; the nature of the injury was not disclosed, and Screen Global Production was still calling it undisclosed in February 2026. He answered a week later, on September 19, with a selfie beside his dog and the whole of William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus” as the caption, ending “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

On October 1, 2025 he posted a set of black-and-white gym photos, hanging from straps with his left leg in a medical boot, captioned “Endure. In enduring, grow strong.” with the line credited to Dak’kon of Planescape: Torment. Variety ran the photos the next day. Shooting began in Scotland on January 28, 2026, the day he posted the first-look photos and promised to tell the story “when the time is right”; by February 11 the production was in London and Scotland, and Russell Crowe, who plays his mentor Ramírez, told the Taormina Film Festival in June, “I just finished the shoot of Highlander.” Amazon MGM is expected to release it in 2027.

Where this leaves him

Cavill’s chart has no weights on it, which is a decision rather than an omission, and it is the smartest thing in his file. Every number he has released is a gap or a schedule: 25 pounds, 5,000 calories, 20 minutes, a litre and a half. The gaps tell you what each job cost and nothing about what he is, and he has held that line through four trainers, three Superman films and a very public moustache. At 43 he has spent the year swinging a sword for Chad Stahelski on a leg that was in a boot last October, having promised on Instagram to tell the story “when the time is right.” On past form, he will give the explanation and keep the number.

Sources

• ABC News, quoting Details (July 2013 issue): “Fat Cavill”, 21 pounds at 17, the refusal to give a weight, “not eating 5,000 calories a day anymore”, Amy Adams on 3 a.m. training, May 2013
• ABC News: Mark Twight on the Man of Steel build (20 pounds, 5,000 calories, “we didn’t care”, 11 months), June 2013
• Gulf News, quoting The Graham Norton Show: the water schedule, “it’s not no water for three days”, Dec 26, 2019
• Today: Cavill’s Instagram statement on leaving Superman, Dec 15, 2022
• Variety Australia: recovery update, left leg in a boot, Oct 2, 2025