Before Geralt of Rivia and the Man of Steel, Henry Cavill was a sparkling vampire in The Twilight Saga… well, almost.

Robert Pattinson might have landed the breakthrough role of Edward Cullen back in 2007, but Stephanie Meyer, author of the original work, later revealed that the actor wasn't her first choice.

"The most disappointing thing for me is losing my perfect Edward. Henry Cavill is now 24 years old. Let us have a moment of quiet in which to mourn…" reads her blog post. The reason, she shared, was that Edward is a high school teen in Twilight, so the then 24-year-old Cavill would be too old to play the character.

The actor said on a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he feels no rivalry with Pattinson, however. In fact, Cavill reacted positively when he found out about Meyer's view, which he only caught wind of after the first Twilight movie was made.

"Not at all because I didn't know about the movie," he said as part of his response to a question on 'famous near misses'. "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 afterwards. I was like, 'Oh okay, that would have been cool.'"

Cavill would later go on to star in the DC Universe as Superman, and in franchises like Mission: Impossible and The Witcher, so missing out on big parts can sometimes be a silver lining - a sentiment that he has brought up in a past interview on The Graham Show.

"Essentially, I got close to a bunch of stuff and didn't get it, but it's funny that people think that's a bad thing," Cavill said.

"In Hollywood - or in the acting industry - everyone's trying to get a role and they're not necessarily getting them. And so, to get an opportunity to be in the limelight by missing out on the big roles is actually a good thing as opposed to a bad thing. And I count my lucky stars for each one of those."

And so do the audience, for being able to witness his impressive performance as Geralt in The Witcher, who will be replaced by Liam Hemsworth in Season Four. Currently, Cavill stars in Enola Holmes 2, and is set to reprise his role as Superman in future DCEU movies.

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This article was first published in Geek Culture.