Cavill reveals Mission: Impossible moustache fuss

When a mega-budget, multi-location, stunt-heavy, CGI-laden spy movie like Mission: Impossible - Fallout is in production, complications are to be expected.

Star Tom Cruise's salary dispute stopped pre-production for a while, and his broken ankle caused production to be shut down for nine weeks.

And then there was co-star Henry Cavill's moustache.

The English actor's previous film, last year's superhero flick Justice League - in which he played Superman - had a change of director and went back into reshoots at the same time that Cavill was working on Fallout.

The problem was that his facial hair in Fallout was contractually required, so he wasn't allowed to shave it off for the Justice League reshoots.

There were reports that Warner Bros., the studio behind Justice League, even offered to pay for a CGI moustache in Fallout if Cavill was allowed to shave.

In the end, it was in Justice League that Cavill sported a distracting CGI-engineered clean-shaven look that spawned Internet jokes aplenty.

Opening here on July 26, Fallout - the sixth movie in the Mission: Impossible franchise - sees super spy Ethan Hunt (Cruise) saving the world again.

His mission this time is to retrieve three plutonium cores from a terrorist who is working with The Syndicate.

Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), the former MI6 operative-turned-rogue captured by Hunt in 2015's Rogue Nation returns in this instalment, but there is also new antagonist August Walker (Cavill), a CIA assassin with orders to eliminate Hunt.

At our interview at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas back in April where the Fallout cast gave an advance look at footage at the CinemaCon trade convention, Cavill, 35, tried to downplay 'Moustachegate'.

"What moustache?" he said, laughing. "Oh, that one, so easy to forget." He then joked that it was bigger than his trailer.

When pressed to elaborate on the negotiations, he added: "It was just because we had already started shooting and we got to a stage so deep into photography that if we had then shaved it, we would have months of reshoots to do for our movie, which we are already in.

"McQ (director Christopher McQuarrie) and I definitely chose a look like that for the character, just because it was something slightly different. We had shot so much already of the moustache that we couldn't then just pretend that the moustache never happened."

Coming in as the new guy, Cavill felt particularly thrilled to be part of an iconic franchise.

"For my character to be a deliberate spanner in the works, that was something which I enjoyed enormously, because I could play to that. It was really good fun to step into something new.

"My MO is very different from Ethan's. I will kill everyone in the room to kill one bad guy. Ethan won't, and I think that's a failing on his part," he said.

Cavill experienced his fair share of adrenaline moments, especially the scenes with Cruise - in particular the helicopter sequence, which was shot in New Zealand and was "by no means for the faint of heart".

"There were a lot of very close calls and there was no other way really to shoot them, apart from close calls. And yeah, Tom getting within a rotor's length of my helicopter, which is about 10 feet (3m)... And I am looking out the side thinking if he does hit me, and if I do survive the helicopter crash which is very low chances anyway, how do I get out of the mountains?" he said with a laugh.

But it wasn't all action all the time - there was also a lot of laughter on set.

Cavill said: "There were some days of giggling which were uncontrollable to the point where (co-star) Simon (Pegg) realised he had me and he could do anything and I would start laughing. And he took full advantage of that and he abused that position of power.

"And there were a lot of times where people were delivering alternate lines and I was just laughing... from behind."

tnp@sph.com.sg

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE EXCLUSIVE BLOCKBUSTER MARATHON

As part of The New Paper's 30th anniversary celebrations, readers can enjoy three times the action with our Mission: Impossible Exclusive Blockbuster Marathon, comprising Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and Fallout. Fifty winners will walk away with a pair of tickets to this special screening on July 28 at Cathay - Parkway Parade. To take part, go to www.tnp.sg/MI6. The contest ends on July 23.