Here’s What Henry Cavill Looks for in a Watch

In mid-September, I found myself living out a scene ripped from a rom-com. In the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown, after navigating a maze of tourists and fake designer bags, I entered a nondescript door, climbed a long stairway, and stepped into a venue straight out of a Celine Song movie: warm, low lighting; hardwood floors; plush couches. There waiting for me was the leading man, Henry Cavill. And, most enthralling of all, he wanted to talk watches.“Often, interviews can be a bit of a painful process,” Cavill told me. “But I now get to actually share my feelings about wonderful things like watches.” It was hard not to swoon.That evening, Cavill was at a Longines event as part of his role as one of the Swiss maker’s celebrity endorsers—or, in the brand’s parlance, “ambassadors of elegance.” He certainly looked the part in a brown double-breasted jacket and white trousers, to say nothing of his jawline that looked sculpted for the express purpose of selling expensive timepieces. And ever since signing with Longines in 2025, Cavill says, he’s developed a genuine interest in horology.Ilya S. Savenok/Getty ImagesThe erstwhile Superman is currently smack dab in the most enjoyable phase of collecting: He knows just enough to speak intelligibly about what he does and doesn’t like, but he’s still green enough to have a whole world of geekery left to discover. There are still so many rabbit holes for him to dive down, YouTube explainers to watch, experts to meet and badger with questions, and grails to add to his wishlist.For most of his career, Cavill was agnostic about what he put on his wrist, despite being constantly surrounded by fine watches on sets and red carpets. Despite enjoying a little Casio calculator watch as a kid, he mostly resented the pressure to embrace luxury timepieces he felt from business types as his star rose. “I was exposed to watches in a way that was more, ‘Oh, you should be wearing a watch, you should be speaking to these people, and you should be doing that.’” Cavill said. He was often put in watches with “bits moving in the back, lots of gold, and all sorts of sapphires and rubies and emeralds.” These left him cold. “Yeah,” he would mutter, reenacting his disinterest for me, “that’s a fancy watch.”Now, though, the actor has opinions on how different case sizes look on his wrist and colors he prefers. “Ivories, rose golds, brown straps,” he shared, as if incanting some sort of horological spell. Now, he is threatening to teeter over into the deep end. He’s starting to notice the subtle quirks that drive serious collectors mad, like a turquoise accent that was recently added to Longines’s standard navy blue Hydroconquest. “I’m like, ‘Hold on a second. Why did I not see this one before?’” He’s started looking beyond what’s in the glass cases at Longines and begun asking to see what’s tucked away in the archives. "Show me what you have in the cupboard,” he says. “Let’s have a look at those."Ilya S. Savenok/Getty ImagesAnd despite resisting those calls to get into watches early on, Cavill’s new interest is already benefiting his career now. The actor is filming a new spy movie with Kevin Hart, and he’s thought deeply about which timepiece would work best for a secret agent. The particular Hydroconquest he chose “has the rubber strap, so there’s a versatility to it,” Cavill explains. “If we had the link bracelet, as soon as you get into a fight, you are breaking your own wrist, let alone a stuntman’s face. And so it just fits the character this time around. There’s a good bit of heft to it, but it’s also very practical.”At the event, Cavill sported the brand’s recently released Master Collection Chrono Monopusher. A monopusher is a chronograph that can start, stop, and reset the stopwatch function with a single button conveniently fused into the crown. Compare that to, say, a Rolex Daytona, and you’ll see the more classic layout that requires three protrusions: two pushers and a crown. Longines’s history with the Monopusher dates all the way back to the late 1800s, when the company introduced the complication in a pocket watch. Despite its deep history with this function, there wasn’t a Monopusher in Longines’s modern catalog until the maker unveiled this one.The Monopusher makes perfect sense for Cavill. Much like a modern watch inspired by one from the late 1800s, Cavill feels truly timeless. Sitting across from him, I can’t help but think of retro yearbook photos from the ’50s or ’60s. It doesn’t matter if his next fight is with a malfunctioning time machine—put Cavill in any era, and I’d expect to find him lending his rugged mug to a watch advertisement. In the present day, he's living out that classic rom-com ending: guy sees watch, guy loves watch, guy gets watch.