Around 2007, as Summit optioned the Twilight film, Stephenie Meyer faced a painful reality about her dream Edward Cullen: Henry Cavill may have aged out of the role. “The most disappointing thing for me is losing my perfect Edward,” she wrote on her website. “Henry Cavill is now twenty-four-years-old. Let us have a moment of quiet in which to mourn.”

Just weeks after Twilight hit shelves in 2005, Meyer had already settled on her perfect Edward Cullen, and his name was Henry Cavill.

“The only actor I’ve ever seen who I think could come close to pulling off Edward Cullen is… (drumroll)… Henry Cavill. Can you see it? I know I can!” she wrote on her website.

Meyer considered Edward “indisputably the most difficult character to cast,” yet she was “passionately decided upon” Cavill. She was also clear-eyed about her own power in the process: “My opinions on the movie matter to no one. I have no influence on what goes on with the movie at all.”

None of that stopped her from holding firm opinions about the rest of the roster.

Emily Browning was her top pick for Bella. “Just look at those lips! Love her!” Meyer wrote, with Elliot Page and Danielle Panabaker also making her list. She was especially blunt about what she didn’t want, warning she’d “throw myself off a tall building if they cast some lip-synching, popstar-slash-actress.”

Carlisle came close to Edward in terms of certainty. Meyer wanted Charlie Hunnam: “Second only to Edward on my ‘passionately decided’ list… He pretty much was Carlisle in Nicholas Nickleby.”

For Charlie Swan, she floated John C. Reilly and Vince Vaughn. Of Reilly she wrote, “He would be so perfect.” Rachael Leigh Cook was her Alice; Cillian Murphy and Joshua Jackson were possibilities for James. Jacob, she thought, could be played by Steven Strait, and later Tyler Posey.

By around 2007, when Summit optioned the film, Meyer was revisiting those choices and facing that painful reality about Cavill.

She acknowledged she still had “no say in who gets hired,” but she wasn’t ready to let Cavill go entirely. Having originally pictured Hunnam as Carlisle, she proposed a swap: “I’m not willing to relinquish Henry completely… I propose that Henry play Carlisle!”

Cavill, for his part, had no clue any of this was happening.

“I didn’t know about the movie. I didn’t know about them wanting to cast me and the internet wasn’t quite the tool that it is now, and so I only found out afterwards,” he said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2022.

His reaction was far more relaxed than Meyer’s heartfelt farewell. “I was like, ‘Oh okay, that would have been cool,’” he recalled. He has expressed no rivalry with Pattinson over the role.

Browning did get an invitation to audition for Bella but turned it down. She was never formally offered the part. Across interviews from 2009 to 2011, she cited the long-term commitment as the sticking point: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t sign on to a trilogy right now.”

She later added that the spotlight itself would have been a problem. “I wouldn’t have been able to handle that attention at that age. I would have gone a little bit insane.” She has no regrets about skipping the audition.

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart ultimately landed the leads. Pattinson had appeared on fan wish lists alongside Hayden Christensen, Orlando Bloom, and Gerard Way. Jackson Rathbone was another popular suggestion; he ended up playing Jasper.

Appearing on some fans’ shortlists offered Pattinson no protection once the casting was confirmed. He said roughly 75,000 people signed a petition against him, with an unflattering still from a previous film helping fan the outrage.

“That was my welcome into Twilight,” he said.

Meyer publicly backed him in 2007, Cavill chapter closed.

“I am ecstatic with Summit’s choice for Edward. There are very few actors who can look both dangerous and beautiful at the same time… Robert Pattinson is going to be amazing.”

She later called his face “otherworldly” and said he would deliver “a good version of Edward physically. Not the Edward I see in my head, of course.”

Where their visions really diverged was in character interpretation. Meyer and Pattinson argued for nearly an hour over whether Edward was “suicidally depressed.” He was convinced; she was not. Even so, she respected the ferocity he brought to the part.

Watching him work on set in Portland, she captured the moment his Edward finally clicked for her:

“Catherine said action, and Rob shifted into character and my jaw dropped open… He’s not playing a version of Edward, he’s playing Edward.”