Henry Cavill on Watches, <i>Warhammer</i>, and Visiting Switzerland with His Brother

On the screen, Henry Cavill has portrayed men of steel and swung swords of silver. But in real life, the 42-year-old British movie star prefers his metal on his wrist. Which is pretty handy, considering he just became the face of the brand new Spirit Zulu Time 1925 by Longines.

"I'm wearing one right now," Cavill tells Esquire over the phone on a recent May afternoon. "I can't stop looking at it. To be an ambassador for Longines and especially for this watch is an honor."

In February, Cavill—who aside from being Superman and Geralt of Rivia also starred in films like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Mission: Impossible – Fallout—was named an ambassador for the 193-year-old watchmaker. Weeks later, he's raving about his in-person visit to the manufacture in scenic Saint-Imier, Switzerland, and singing the praises of the Spirit Zulu Time 1925.

"This is a fairly new discovery for me," Cavill says of his newfound "watch guy" personality. "It wasn't until going to Saint-Imier and seeing Longines. That's where the spark began. The combination of craftsmanship and modern science, it's breathtaking. It feels like magic's being done there."

"It's my everyday watch," Henry Cavill tells Esquire about the Longines Spirit Zulu Time 1925. "That says a lot about what it is and what it is to me. I'm enormously proud of it."

Cavill's new daily accessory is a variant of Longines' best-selling Spirit Zulu Time and features a 39mm steel case and an 18-karat rose-gold bezel. The piece marks the 100th anniversary of the world's first dual-time-zone watch, the original Zulu Time. The name, for those wondering, is a reference to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), otherwise known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)—and otherwise known, if you're in the military, as "Zulu" time. It's basically the zero point from which we calibrate time zones across the globe. And though today's array of smart devices can digitally track those time zones, Longines' reimagined watch is a gorgeous reminder of when world travel was still a frontier for humanity.

"It speaks to my love of adventure," says Cavill. "They were pioneering things during an era when travel was genuinely dangerous. If you got it wrong by a few seconds, it could mean the difference between life and death. ... I'm a proud Brit, and it's lovely to have something tied to that time when Britain was the center of the world."

He continues: "My mother always said: 'No matter what you do, make sure you're the best, and go through life quietly.' That is what Longines does. That understated elegance really speaks to me."

Two details that characterize the Spirit Time 1925 "really tickle" Cavill personally. "The first one is this hidden 1925 date stamp," he points out. "It's not some diamond-encrusted 1925. If you look under the right light, you can see it. It's understated." The second feature is how the watch honors the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory in London with a rose-gold bezel. At one time, the Prime Meridian was marked on the observatory's grounds with a brass strip. In concert with its black matte face dial, you've got a watch fit for a globe-trotting superhero, secret agent, and gentlemen detective like Cavill.

"It just looks fabulous," he says. "It keeps getting more attractive to me every time I check the time."

The Spirit Zulu Time 1925 by Longines reimagines the original Zulu Time, released 100 years ago as one of the first GMT watches.

The love affair started in appropriately beautiful surroundings, when Cavill took that trip to Saint-Imier, with his brother along for company. There, against the endless green of the Swiss Alps—Cavill calls them "stunning" and "peaceful"; "they take your breath away"—his eyes widened to the art of watchmaking, which demands such precision and attention it can be almost meditative. Cavill couldn't help but notice a few similarities to a preexisting personal passion: Warhammer 40,000.

Cavill is a noted enthusiast of the tabletop strategy game, one of the most popular games in the world, and is currently executive-producing films and TV versions of the game for Amazon Studios. Like many Warhammer die-hards, he's spent hours behind tables painting and brushing Adeptus Custode infantries.

Seated at a Longines workshop bench in Switzerland, he felt at home. After all, both watches and Warhammer "involve very small tools, lots of patience, and a steady hand."

"What I was doing required finesse and concentration, and that was only one watch. It's more difficult than my level of painting Warhammer," Cavill says. "But I felt comfortable, picking up small tools and tiny screws." With a laugh: "I wish they had let me sit longer, because I would have happily spent all day doing that."

Henry Cavill is currently the executive producer for Warhammer at Amazon, which will include films and TV shows based on the tabletop gaming franchise. As his schedule gets busy, he has the Longines Spirit Zulu Time 1925 to keep him on time.

It's no wonder he could use a little break. Bringing Warhammer to life "is a dream come true," he explains, "but it's different from what I've done before, in the sense I haven't had my hand on the tiller of things before. It's wonderful doing that. It is a tricky IP, and a very complex IP, and that's what I love about it. The challenges that come with putting this on the page in a way that is doing justice to that complexity, that trickiness, and that nuance, is a challenge I'm enjoying enormously."

And when he needs to relax, he can just look at his wrist. "I immediately think of my brother," he says. "When we visited Saint-Imier and learned the history of Longines together. It's little pieces like that that make a timepiece personal."