Henry Cavill talks Man Of Steel

Whilst the new suit has inevitably sparked debate (No pants? Sacrilege!), Man Of Steel ’s new Superman Henry Cavill appears to have been met with fairly widespread approval.

Cavill himself has been talking about the part whilst promoting new film Immortals , and it sounds as though the appointment is still sinking in.

“I was trying very, very hard to play it cool on the phone with Zack Snyder when he called me,” said Cavill to Collider . “I thought, ‘Okay, play it cool. Not too cool, obviously. But, play it cool.’

"As soon as I hung up, I was leaping up and down and running up and down the stairs and roaring and shouting, and then trying to call everyone. No one picked up their phones believe it or not! I was trying to tell the news to everyone and no one was answering their phone!”

Cavill’s nearest and dearest sound equally thrilled by the news, with his young nephews understandably lording it over their mates in the playground.

“Apparently, they went to school when I first heard the news,” explains Cavill. “One of them was wearing a little Superman outfit and the teacher sort of told them off and then spoke to my sister-in-law after, saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with the boys. I don’t know what you’ve been telling them. They’ve been lying to me, because they’re telling me that their uncle is Superman and frankly it’s ridiculous.’ Which brought my sister-in-law out there and she said, ‘Actually, it’s not ridiculous; he is [ Superman ]. So you’ve got to let them wear their little outfits. Thank you very much.’”

So has Cavill been doing his homework to make sure his nephews aren’t disappointed when he hits the big screen? You bet your life he has.

“Where the character truly belongs and where the character truly comes from is not from the movies or the TV shows,” begins Cavill, “it’s from the comic books. So I went straight to the comic books and had stacks of them and just read and read and read and read and read. I enjoyed so much learning about the character in such a dense manner. The comic books were my source of material. The TV shows and movies were someone else’s interpretation and so I left that to them.”

Man Of Steel is released in the US on 14 June 2013.