Simply Abu Dhabi XXXI

7 1 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I H enry Cavill swaps his Superman cape for a spy's suit to play a mustachioed CIA agent in the new Mission: Impossible film. He tells why his facial hair caused so many issues, how Tom Cruise inspired him to try new things and what is was like watching the superstar break his ankle during a stunt. Henry Cavill's moustache is so famous it has made headlines around the world, so it comes as something of a disappointment when his top lip is perfectly smooth when we meet. ‘Before you sit down, would you mind taking a selfie with me?’ he asks, incredibly politely. ‘Is that all right?’ After he snaps the picture I inspect it for any inkling of a tache that ended up costing a film studio millions of dollars. Not a whisker. For those who don't remember, Cavill was filming his part as a mustachioed August Walker in Mission: Impossible Fallout when he had to return to the set of Justice League for some Superman reshoots. Cavill couldn't shave the facial hair off and Superman is moustache-free so Warner Brothers had to pay an eye-watering amount of money to CGI it out of the finished film. ‘When they came to me to say they wanted me to shave it off, I got it, because Superman doesn't have a moustache,’ he explains. ‘But I was about to go sit in a helicopter in New Zealand with my head out the window. ‘A fake one just wasn't going to stay on there and so it was completely out of our hands. It was just bad timing. Really, really bad timing. ‘What made it worse was that we then went on hiatus shortly afterwards anyway.’ He chuckles mischievously. ‘I shouldn't laugh but it's one of those things where life just likes to just punch you in the kidneys. ‘And I did kind of miss it when it was gone. When it came to shaving it off, I thought, “Ah, this has created so much trouble that to shave it off seems a shame.”’ The hiatus he is referring to came when Tom Cruise, who reprises his role as Ethan Hunt for a sixth outing and who famously does his own stunts, broke his ankle while leaping between buildings. The megastar was filming on the streets of London when he slammed into a wall and broke the bone, forcing the production to halt until he could walk again. HenryCavill B Y L A U R A H A R D I N G