Henry Cavill for his role as Geralt of Rivia in the Netflix series “The witcheris known to have assumed quite a bit: So Not only did he tense his vocal cords with constant growling, but he sometimes went without water for days. And Cavill even risked his eyesight for the first season of the fantasy series – but this is not due to a particularly daring method acting method, but pure and simple unreasonableness. But one after the other:
One of the visual trademarks of the eponymous witch, in addition to his snow-white hair, is especially the striking yellow eye color – which Henry Cavill, of course, does not have. Instead, the 40-year-old had to wear colored contact lenses during the shoot. While this gave Geralt of Rivia his signature look, the tool nearly killed Cavill itself!
The “Man of SteelStar was warned early on that wearing the contact lenses for too long could harm him. “My ophthalmologist told me, ‘I don’t care what else you need to shoot, get those damn contacts out because eventually you’ll go blind!'” Cavill said in the conversation with the British magazine Metro.
“But I was sure she was probably just trying to sell me a more dramatic version of the truth, since I’m quite stubborn. And I said to her, ‘No, that’s okay, we can film for a few more hours, we’ll be fine’”
Despite his doctor’s repeated warnings of the consequences (“No, it’s definitely not going to go well!”), Cavill remained unmoved — and continued to wear the lenses for several hours at a time. But soon he felt the effects of his carelessness on his own body…
Henry Cavill even ignored pain
During the filming in the Canary Islands, the actor gradually began to notice a deterioration. A lot of dust had collected behind his contact lenses, which had been pushed up by the volcanic rock that can be found all over the islands. “The dust got behind the contact lenses and scratched my eyes”Cavill described — but the actor didn’t understand the first signs of inflammation as a warning sign either.
“It was very, very painful,” Cavill continued. “But I thought that’s because I don’t get much sleep and I’m tired. I thought I just had to keep going. It even went so far that my eye technician caught me hiding in the shadows with my eyes closed because it was very bright She told me to take my contacts off right now. And I said, “No, no, I’m fine! I’m really fine! Give me something to dab my eyes with before we go any further!” She then put her foot down and threatened to stop shooting until I took the lenses out!”
That worked – and certainly saved Cavill from worse. In the meantime, the star has played two more seasons of The Witcher, with the first half of season three recently dropping on Netflix. Of course, Geralt still has his yellow eyes. We can only hope that Cavill has learned from his experience and now has more insight!