Henry Cavill Was Fat as a Child, Plays World of Warcraft, and Other Surprisingly Humanizing Details About Our Generation’s Superman

When you look as though you were designed by German engineers to make the planet’s men feel inferior about their physiques, how do you go about humanizing yourself to the masses? If you’re Henry Cavill, the chiseled human specimen playing Superman in the upcoming DC Comics feature Man of Steel, you do so by sitting down for a magazine profile, as the British actor did recently forDetails.

In the cover story, available in full here, Cavill lets down his muscle-bound guard to show that he is a modest 30-year-old with arguably geeky hobbies, embarrassing childhood nicknames, and a fondness for fried foods, just like the rest of us. Below, the most humanizing revelations about the Man of Steelstar:

Whether or not you believe it, Cavill claims that he was a hefty child.

“I was fat,” he says. “I was Fat Cavill.” Later in the story, Cavill reveals that it was not until he got a role in an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo at age 17 that he lost 21 pounds and “wasn’t Fat Cavill anymore.”

He seems to be a homebody.

“I’m not much of a schmoozer,” he tells Detailsas he walks to a restaurant 30 miles away from Burbank. He adds that he is “not much of an eventgoer. I’d rather stay close to here. This doesn’t feel like L.A. It doesn’t feel like work.”

He modestly cops to Hollywood rejections.

The other tentpole that eluded Cavill: “I screen-tested for James Bond when I was 22,” he says. “But Daniel [Craig] was above and beyond the best choice.”

He has geeky hobbies.

While shooting the sex-soaked period drama [Showtime’s The Tudors] in Dublin from 2007 through 2010, Cavill spent his downtime buried in Robert Jordan’s fantasy series Wheel of Time. “The books are about the rise of a chosen one with great powers,” Cavill says. “I’d stay up until five, six in the morning reading. I couldn’t put them down.”

He has more geeky hobbies.

“When I found out I got the [Man of Steel] part,” he says, “I was home playingWorld of Warcraft. Zack called, and I thought he was calling to let me down easy. But then it dawned on me that he was giving me the part. I had to play it cool.

He prefers deep-fried food over healthy menu alternatives.

“If you’re looking for healthy, the mahimahi is good with the spinach and the steamed broccoli,” he says. “But I keep wanting to get the fish and chips. . . . I’m going for the fish and chips.”

He was not immune to emotional weakness as a youth.

At boarding school, Cavill was prone to homesickness. “I bawled on the phone to my mom four times a day,” he says. “I became an easy target.” Being Fat Cavill didn’t exactly boost the boy’s self-esteem, but it did help him form an early understanding of his breakout character’s inner life. “My version of Superman,” he says, “is essentially of a guy who has spent his whole life alone.”

Before he was famous, he had a fan moment with a famous actor.

The other touchstone moment at boarding school involved Russell Crowe, who plays Cavill’s father, Jor-El, in Man of Steel. “He was on campus filming Proof of Life,” Cavill says. “Everyone was standing in a semicircle, and I thought, ‘We look ridiculous, staring like he’s some kind of prize pony.’ So I walked up and said, ‘Hi, my name is Henry. I’m thinking of becoming an actor. What’s the acting world like?’ He said something like, ‘Sometimes it’s great. Sometimes it’s not so great. It’s fun acting. And they pay well.’”