Henry Cavill covers the latest issue of GQ Australia. He’s promoting the latest Mission Impossible movie, the one with Tom Cruise (the one I don’t care about). The interview is mostly about Cavill’s life code, how he treats people with respect, how he tries to be a good guy, etc. There’s a sort of smarminess to him that I wish I could un-see, something which honestly reminds me of Tom Cruise. But then Cavill did something I wasn’t expecting him to do: he started spouting off some dumpster fire opinions about Me Too, dating and ladies. You can read the full piece here. Some garbage highlights:
His desire to find someone to spend his life with: “I’ve always been someone who’s put a lot of stock and value in the intimacy of a relationship, of a human partner,” he says. He loves his dog, Cal, and would defend him to the death, “but there’s something about having a girlfriend with whom you can share all the difficulties that you go through, or all the great stuff that you go through. It’s so nice to have someone to share the intimate moments with… Even if it’s just that unspoken communication of holding a hand.”
What he’s learned from the #MeToo moment we’re in. “I’ve been fortunate enough to not be around the kind of people who behave that way. To my memory there’s been no moments where I look back and think, ‘Ooh, OK, maybe someone shouldn’t have gone through that’. I know there have been situations with people I’ve worked with being perhaps overfamiliar with some of the actresses. But, I’ve always walked up to them and said, ‘Hey, are you all right? That’s creepy’.”
Whether the Me Too movement made him reexamine his own behavior: “I like to think that I’ve never been like that. I think any human being alive today, if someone casts too harsh a light on anything, you could be like, ‘Well, OK, yeah, when you say it like that, maybe.’ But it’s such a delicate and careful thing to say because there’s flirting which, for example, in a social environment is in context – and is acceptable. And that has been done to me as well, in return.”
Chasing women: “Stuff has to change, absolutely. It’s important to also retain the good things, which were a quality of the past, and get rid of the bad things. There’s something wonderful about a man chasing a woman. There’s a traditional approach to that, which is nice. I think a woman should be wooed and chased, but maybe I’m old-fashioned for thinking that. It’s very difficult to do that if there are certain rules in place. Because then it’s like: ‘Well, I don’t want to go up and talk to her, because I’m going to be called a rapist or something’. So you’re like, ‘Forget it, I’m going to call an ex-girlfriend instead, and then just go back to a relationship, which never really worked’. But it’s way safer than casting myself into the fires of hell, because I’m someone in the public eye, and if I go and flirt with someone, then who knows what’s going to happen? Now? Now you really can’t pursue someone further than, ‘No’. It’s like, ‘OK, cool’. But then there’s the, ‘Oh why’d you give up?’ And it’s like, ‘Well, because I didn’t want to go to jail?’”
This is the myth of Good Guy in action. The Good Guy sees no evil, hears no evil, speaks no evil, but when he does see something, he merely checks on the damsel in distress, perhaps in the hopes of chasing the fair maiden. Everything about equating flirtation and courtship with Me Too? Is he joking? No, he’s not joking. He’s one of those people who, when faced with the first person accounts of rampant sexual abuse, rape and harassment, has to suddenly muse about a simpler time when men were allowed to “flirt.” And why does he come across like the kind of guy who stalks women in the name of the “chase”?
Cover courtesy of GQ Australia, additional photos courtesy of WENN.
