The Truth About Henry Cavill's Witcher Injury That Almost Ended His Career

Henry Cavill is a bona fide Hollywood A-lister with a very bright future ahead of him. Whether playing Superman in the DCEU or appearing alongside Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible – Fallout," the charming Brit has lent his talents to some of the biggest blockbusters to grace the screen in recent memory. Furthermore, now that Daniel Craig has retired from the "Bond" franchise, word on the street is that Cavill could become the new 007.

That said, playing Geralt of Rivia in Netflix's successful adaptation of "The Witcher" has been a dream come true for the actor. As Gizmodo points out, Cavill is a self-proclaimed fantasy nerd who spends as much time geeking out as he does working on his abs. Naturally, he was a huge fan of Andrezj Sapkowski's "The Witcher" books and the CD Projekt Red video games long before the show came to fruition.

However, Cavill's time on "The Witcher" hasn't always been a pleasant experience. Back in December 2020, the actor sustained a leg injury that almost derailed production on Season 2. He has kept fairly quiet about the injury since it happened, but now, he is sharing some details about the grisly experience in a new interview.

"The Witcher" requires Henry Cavill to get physical in some pretty harsh and grueling environments that would test any human being's mettle. This makes him quite susceptible to aches and pains at the best of times, but his setback back in December of last year was especially brutal for the performer.

"It was a very, very bad tear, and I was very lucky that it wasn't a complete detachment of the hamstring," Cavill told The Hollywood Reporter in a new, in-depth profile. He then went on to explain how the show's schedule had to be reshuffled to push his action scenes to the end of the production. However, he still tried his best to juggle his physical therapy with his commitments to the series. "The difficulty was working while I was injured. Because I wanted to do more for the production," he recalled.

Of course, pushing himself too much would have spelled disaster of Cavill's career in the types of roles he's known for, so he had to find the right balance when it came to working on "The Witcher." He remarked, "[It] was having to find that balance between, 'Yes, let's push, push, push,' and, 'Whoa, hold on, if I tear this further, it's the end of my action career," and then added, "That was my worst moment of the past year — professionally."