His Hunger Games face is teen-familiar, but this year, Sam Claflin matures on screen in the long-awaited film version of bestseller Me Before You. It’s been the making of him, he tells Kate Wills.

When Sam Claflin arrives at the hotel in south-west London for our interview & shoot, it’s a bit of a Clark Kent moment. I was expecting the perma-tanned, super-buff, trident-toting Finnick Odair from The Hunger Games (yes, I am a 31-year-old teenage girl). So when a pale, scruffy-haired, bookish-looking man shuffles in, wearing round tortoiseshell glasses and sporting a battered Mulberry satchel, I almost don’t recognise him. He orders a coffee and looks – like most new fathers – utterly exhausted. Claflin and his wife, Luther star Laura Haddock, had their first child, a son, six weeks before we meet, and today is the first time he’s left the baby bubble.He’s already beaming about fatherhood – “I’m already missing him” – and despite being “at that point of tiredness where your eyes hurt”, is unfailingly polite and charming. He chats with the photographer about Norwich FC and the last series of Catastrophe, makes a fuss of a passing Pekingese puppy and endears everyone on set with tales of nappy-changing woes (the words “uncontrollable hose pipe” feature). The Superman-style disguise could come in handy. This year, Claflin is set to make the transition from teen star to household name. He’s already got blockbusters under his belt: he landed a part in the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean  film almost straight out of drama school, then there was The Hunger Games (it grossed $2.3 billion, you might have heard of it), and Snow White And The Huntsman (last month he popped up in the sequel). He’s mastered the romcom, opposite Lily Collins in Love, Rosie, and won critical acclaim for The Riot Club. But his new role, as a suicidal paraplegic in the adaptation of Jojo Moyes’ bestseller Me Before You is a departure from anything he’s done before.

“A part like Will Traynor is a dream,” he says, his actor’s RP occasionally veering into the flat ‘a’s of the Norfolk broads, “It was the most eye-opening experience and I feel like going through the experience has changed me. I know it sounds very clichéd & naive but I am now very aware when pavements aren’t level and curbs are too high or ramps aren’t available.”

Just as Eddie Redmayne faced critisism for what detractors called “crippling up” to play Stephen Hawking, the question of whether able-bodied actors should play disabled parts has been levied at Claflin, too. “Someone on Twitter said how angry they were that I was cast instead of a disabled actor and I hear that point, I do,” he says, sounding genuinely concerned. “Of course there are parts of the novel, and our film, where Will is able-bodied and that would’ve been more difficult for someone who wasn’t able-bodied to portray. But there needs to be more opportunities for people of other colours, races or physical abilities. It’s not that white, able-bodied men are stealing everyone’s parts, it’s that the scriptwriters need to write other stories. I would if I could, but I can’t!”

Claflin lost three and a half stone of his Hunger Games bulk to play Will. For four months he followed a 500-calorie-a-day diet and worked out three times a day. “I drove myself into the ground,” he says. But the transformation was more than just physical. “There was a point just before filming where I was in a similar place to Will emotionally and mentally. By no means am I saying I know what being a paraplegic is like, but I was depressed and low on energy and in great pain for completely opposite reasons. I wasn’t in the mood to do anything, which is how Will is at the beginning of the movie.”

If you’ve read the book, you’ll know that in Me Before You Will petitions his parents to take him to Dignitas, the Swiss assisted-suicide clinic. “I wasn’t aware of assisted suicide clinics before I was cast,” admits Claflin, “I wanted to do a bit of research and delved quite deeply and darkly into that world. The Terry Pratchett documentary about it was mind-blowing.” Although he refuses to be drawn on his own views about this controversial subject – “My honest opinion, honestly, is…everyone has a different opinion” – he hints that he believes in the right to die with dignity. “Humans have freedom of thought and freedom of speech…so why are we taking that away from people?”

Claflin spent four months rehearsing with Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, who plays Will’s carer and love interest, Louisa. He also developed a rapport with the book’s author Jojo Moyes. “Sam is a sweetheart,” she tells me over email. “He is also the nicest-smelling man I’ve ever met. So much so that I and a couple of the female crew members would sneak up to him on set and inhale him.”

Although he’ll happily upload videos of him and Laura rap-syncing to Iggy Azalea and snaps of his cockapoo Rosie, don’t expect shots of Sam Junior any time soon. “We’re purposely shying away from posting any pictures of the baby,” he says, unwilling to even divulge his son’s name. “I don’t want to force my child into a world that he may or may not wish to go into. he might want to be a banker and change his surname for all I know.” It’s  fairly uncommon these days for anyone to be married with children in their twenties, let alone movie stars, but Claflin was keen to settle down. “The day I met Laura I knew I wanted to marry her, so it didn’t feel like we were rushing it,” he says. After meeting his future wife in an audition forMy Week With Marilyn, Sam called his agent and told him he’d met the girl he wanted to marry. The next day they had a chance encounter on the tube (you couldn’t make it up!), and months later, Haddock got in touch with Claflin on Facebook (“she definitely pursued me”). They married in 2013, and from the dreamy look in his eyes when he talks about her, to the “Hi, sweetie” when she calls during our shoot, they’re clearly very much in love. For Claflin, having children was “written in the stars”. “As a kid, I loved playing with dolls, did work experience in a playschool and my mum was a child-minder, so I’ve grown up around kids”. Yet nothing could prepare him for having his own. “Someone described it to my wife as ‘the best shock in the world’ – I think that’s fitting.” He says fatherhood has given him a “new-found admiration” for his parents and “anyone who’s been through it – it’s really hard!”

When we meet, Laura has been pictured on the red carpet for the first time since giving birth, and a certain website has commented on her “svelte post-baby body”. Does he feel protective of her? “I do, and I think she’s probably more paranoid about it than she needs to be. No-one should be expected to snap back into shape but I don’t think she has anything to worry about. Laura looks amazing. She is amazing.”

Claflin also knows what it is like to have his body scrutinised. “Me and Laura were on holiday and we were papped on the beach and we thought ‘Who gives a crap about us?’ But I started reading the comments underneath the photos and they were really negative like ‘You say he’s buff? Look at him, he’s fat.’ Unfortunately, in the industry we work in, it’s expected, but I don’t go walking down the street telling people they’re fat and ugly. People should be kinder. I am a normal person – I have feelings! I constantly worry about how I look because I think the standard amongst other actors is so high. Take Zac Efron for example. He’s about my age, we were both nominated for best shirtless scene and I’d vote for him! He keeps that up all the time. That’s one hell of a life choice. I couldn’t do it. I despise the gym. I’ll do it for work if I need to, but if I don’t need to then I’d rather have a pint or a burger with my mates.”

Claflin turns 30 next month, so just about remembers life pre-internet (“You’d call a mate on your landline and his mum would say ‘He’s out somewhere’ so you’d take your bike and find him”) and laments the role that social media can play in making or breaking an actor. “Being famous now is how many followers you have on Instagram and I think that’s quite sad,” he says. “So many people I know work so hard and save up a lifetime of money to go to drama school or university, and then when they get round to auditioning for a part, it goes to the daughter or son of so-and-so. I think that’s my working class roots – when you see someone from privilege walk into a job which you know someone else strived for, it’s infuriating.”

One of four boys, Claflin grew up in Norwich with his dad, a finance officer, and his mum, a classroom assistant at his school, the local comp. Sam was captain of the football team, until injury forced him to try acting. “I was a loud mouth,” he says. “I was 5ft 2in and had a shaved head, earring and gold necklace.  I wore a lot of Kappa.” He credits his family for keeping him grounded. His mum sorts all his fan mail and makes him reply to every letter. “I remember the first time I saw the amount, I said, ‘Can’t you sign my signature?’ and she said, ‘Don’t be so ungrateful! People have spent days…look at the artwork on this one!’”

Soon he’ll start shooting My Cousin Rachel with Rachel Weisz, an adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier story by Notting Hill director Roger Michell. With Claflin’s floppy hair, dimples and self deprecating wit, it’s not a stretch to see him become the next Hugh Grant. But he says he’d much prefer a career like Christian Bale’s. “He physically transforms from part to part,” he says. “No-one really knows what ‘Christian Bale looks like and I like hiding behind a role and getting lost in a character. I love the process of losing weight or gaining weight or growing a craggy beard.” In fact, he cultivated an impressive pencil moustache (“that was all me!”) for his role in 1940’s set comedy Their Finest Hour And A Half, out later this year, co-starring Gemma Arterton and Bill Nighy.

As our time comes to an end, Claflin casually lets slip that he’s doing a half marathon later that day. “Well, my friend was doing one,” he explains, reluctantly. “So I said I’d train with him, and now I’m doing it, too.” Dad bod or no dad bod, he is definitely still a more-than-a-bit Superman.

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It’s a certain type of character who can be found lunching at New York City’s The Crosby Street Hotel’s Crosby Bar at 2  p.m. on a weekday. But, if you survey the scene closely enough on this slightly overcast November Wednesday, you’ll notice that tucked among the dilettantes, ladies who lunch, and rosé-sniffing aesthetes, is a bonafide movie star. Luckily for Sam Claflin, who reprises his role as bronzed Merman Finnick Odair in today’s fourth and final installment of the ?Hunger Games? saga, ?Mockingjay – Part 2?, everyone is either too engrossed in their own conversations or too cool to harass the foppish Brit twirling his rum cocktail in the corner. Though the 29-year-old actor certainly commands attention—?after all, this is the guy who can make eating a sugar cube look like lascivious foreplay—?there’s also something charmingly unassuming about him. And to hear Claflin gush about his wife, ?Da Vinci’s Demons? actress Laura Haddock, is to know exactly what this guy is all about. So when he’s not partying with Brad and Angie (seriously), rest assured that this family man is at home with his leading lady and their beloved Cockapoo, Rosie, painstakingly creating Iggy Azalea karaoke videos. Does he contradict himself? Very well then. ?

There’s a pivotal scene in ?Mockingjay – Part 2 in which you take down a pack of grotesque CGI mutts. All my colleague Sally could talk about was how ripped your back muscles looked…

Oh no! That’s the only moment that I didn’t actually do [laughs]. That was the one stunt of the entire movie. Anyway, by the time we got to the fight sequence I was exhausted and tired and cold and hungry and no one had spoken to each other for like three weeks because we were all so miserable.

That sounds brutal.

The really difficult thing was that everyone else got machine guns and all I had was a trident! There were so many moments in the script up to that point where I didn’t actually get to do anything. I was just sort of standing behind everyone else looking after Josh [Hutcherson]’s character. When we actually got around to getting into the sewers, and doing the close combat kind of stuff, I got to play around a little bit more.

Once again you are caught snacking in this movie. You know people are still obsessed with how you ate that sugar cube…

It’s a little intense.

Well, you do pop it in kind of gingerly…

Yeah [laughs], I sort of suck it in. I was trying to make it as lewd and sexual as possible. Cheers!

I wish I could drink this, but I am pregnant. I know your wife is also expecting her first child. I have to say, men have it much better off in this scenario…

I’ve been reading this book that I think a lot of people who are about to be parents read called Fatherhood. Basically what this book is trying to say is that, from this experience, you will walk away feeling like you have really grown an appreciation for the female form and the female gender in general. I really have a newfound appreciation. Not that I didn’t have one before, but I feel like I’ve grown as a man a little bit. I’ve never been more in love with my wife than this moment.

You guys are very cute. I loved your Dubsmash duet of Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy.”

See, that wasn’t even a Dubsmash. It was just a random video that I did. One of my friends jokingly sent me a video of him and his girlfriend doing it in a car, but with just one line. I thought, ‘I’m going to outdo them. I’m going to do the whole verse.’ So I started doing it alone, but I didn’t really know the lines. It took me a good 150 takes before I got decent at it. Just as I started getting there, Laura walked in. So I was like, ‘I’ve got to get you in now!’ But then it took us another hundred takes to get the timing of her coming out and the positions right. That maybe took three or four hours.

You must really love Iggy.

I think she’s this rad, badass, rapper. She’s so kind of…real and really grounded.

She gets a lot of shit.

I don’t know about that. I sort of don’t read that shit. That’s an element of this industry I really can’t stand.

I think it’s a form of envy that manifests itself in weird ways…

What happens to me is, you know, I play Finnick in the film and someone will go, ‘Oh my god. He’s so ugly. He’s too ugly to play Finnick.’ But at the same time I never thought I was good-looking enough to play Finnick. It’s not like I’m running around with a sign on my face going, ‘I’m the most beautiful human being and I should be the Sexiest Man Alive.’ I don’t think that about myself, so I don’t need other people to tell me that.

Well, The Hunger Games fans are also hyperspecific.

What’s actually been incredible about The Hunger Games is the full 360 that people seem to have done…The moment Catching Fire came out there was a lot of positive feedback. It’s grown to such a point now that when I go to premieres and screenings and meet fans on the street they’re always like, ‘You’re the best Finnick.’ I’m like, ‘But I’m also the worst Finnick…because I’m the only Finnick.’

So I’ve seen another, probably lesser-seen, movie of yours, The Riot Club. That night gets absurdly out of hand. What was the best party you’ve ever been to?

That’s a very good question. Actually I’d say, I don’t know how much I can talk about it, but Josh [Hutcherson] had, like, an after party at his house the other night after the L.A. premiere and that was pretty awesome. Pretty bumpin’. But I’d say it would have to be one of my first-ever party experiences in L.A. My agent invited me to his house, where he was hosting a party. I arrived and there was Gerard Butler at the door and he’s like, ‘Hey mate.’ I walked in and saw Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie. You knowEntourage?

Of course.

So [Adrien Grenier’s character, Vincent Chase] goes through all of those experiences, but with his best friends. Well, I was doing it all on my own, basically, taking mental photographs. One of the craziest craziest weekends I’ve ever experienced. I’ve also been to one of Madonna’s house parties.

At Madonna’s house?

Yeah, I don’t even…You just can’t compute things like that. I was pretty far gone by the time I got there so I don’t remember many details. I should have stolen some toilet paper. It was after a big event, like the Oscars or something, so again, everyone’s there and everyone’s loose. I remember spilling a whole glass of red wine down somebody. There was an epic selfie of me, Lily Collins, Selena Gomez, and Vanessa Hudgens at some point.

What a gang!

Well, I was about to work with Lily Collins, so she kind of looked after me I suppose. I was there with my agent and Jared Leto, who was sort of hanging out with us. It was really bizarre.

If you saw Jared Leto the next week, would he be like, ‘Oh, hey man. From the party!’

I would like to think that he would! [Laughs] Honestly, we spent a long time together, but you just don’t know. I mean, everyone, especially me, was so drunk.

So, one last thing: I love your hair. What’s going on here? You look like a mad scientist. I’m getting, like, a young Jude Law right now…

Funny enough, for years he was my sort of hero in terms of his fashion and a lot of the jobs that he did—especially when he was younger.

You look like him!

I don’t, but thank you. I like to look kind of effortless…even though effort goes into looking effortless.

(source)

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