It’s strange, perhaps, to hear an actor express gratitude for a character not being complex. It’s usually the opposite: you’ll hear about how much depth was offered, how much there was to explore.
But Roger Michell’s new adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier classic My Cousin Rachel presented star Sam Claflin with something else entirely: the enticement of a character utterly straightforward, yet in the most fascinating way.
“The thing that really drew me to him was the fact that he’s actually quite simple and two-dimensional,” he admits to me. “He’s like a child, you know? In the sense that he says what he wants and he’s so used to getting it. If he doesn’t get it, he has a hissy fit. And I think that was quite unique, playing an adult-child, it was quite different and a departure.”
Indeed, Claflin’s so far largely crafted a career fit for the dashing male lead: in his breakout roles in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and The Hunger Games series, or as a romantic interest for Me Before You and Their Finest. On paper, a period drama like My Cousin Rachel would seem to offer more of the same, but Daphne du Maurier was no conventional novelist.
Claflin’s Philip goes from headstrong, dedicated bachelor to fawning puppy in a mere gaze directed at the bewitching Rachel (Rachel Weisz), the widow of his own guardian and cousin, Ambrose, who died in such mysterious circumstances in Italy. In short, he’s a man not too difficult to figure out.
“I’ve spent my entire career thus far begging to get more complex and three-dimensional characters, with lots more layers, but I quite enjoyed the boyish charm of him,” Claflin adds. “The kind of impetuous nature of his personality. It was incredibly enjoyable and fun to explore that.”
Sam Claflin has a bone to pick with the film industry. Why aren’t there more roles where men fall in love with older women? In fact, he asks, why is it such an issue in general?
“Hollywood just doesn’t allow it to happen,” he tells us. “In film, you don’t even see it with couples of a similar age – it’s always the case that the girl is 20 and the man is 40. And I don’t know why, maybe it’s because that young-woman thing is desirable to male audiences. It goes back to the point of it still being a very male-driven world.”
Claflin’s wife, the actress Laura Haddock, is a year older than him – hardly the dramatic age gap he’s referring to – but he remembers pining over an older woman in his younger years.
“When I was a teenage boy, well, I mean every teenage boy has had a fantasy about a female teacher at some point,” he says. “It’s still seen as odd that an older woman would be with a younger man, but not the other way round. It should be equal; I wish I had an answer.”
The Suffolk-born actor’s latest movie sees him explore such a relationship. He stars in the Daphne du Maurier adaptation My Cousin Rachel, in which his character falls for an older woman who may or may not have murdered his late guardian.
This storyline aside, Claflin relates to the role in more ways than one – firstly, they both have a penchant for romance.
ACTOR Sam Claflin — star of The Hunger Games movies, last year’s hit romance Me Before You and upcoming British comedy Their Finest — says his introduction to Australia was “honest to god, the most crazy first week in any place I’ve ever been”.
The 30-year-old Englishman is in Hobart to shoot The Nightingale, director Jennifer Kent’s follow up to The Babadook, the horror film that made the Aussie hot property internationally. Claflin landed in Sydney at the start of March, stepping straight into the colour and buzz of Mardi Gras. “Very unexpected,” the actor told News Corp Australia with a chuckle.
After three days, he decamped to Canberra where an Outward Bound guide took Claflin and a couple of his Nightingale castmates into the bush for a team-building exercise. It also doubled as preparation for the film, which is set in the 1820s and sees Claflin’s character pursued through the Tasmanian wilderness by a young, female Irish convict who is seeking revenge for the brutal murder of her family.
Writer-director Kent has said while not a horror film, The Nightingale will be “horrific”. Claflin describes it as “quite a dark film” and “very compelling and authentic”. The Londoner said of his introduction to the bush: “I never felt like my life was in danger, so it wasn’t fully like this film. It was a way for us to get used to the outdoors and some of the terrain that we’d be working in. But we were obviously very well looked after and were wearing contemporary clothes as opposed to 1820s boots.
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Magazine Scans > 2017 > Cosmopolitan USA – April
The British charm bomb who made you sweat in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and bawl in Me Before You bring the swoons as screenwriter Tom Buckley in Their Finest (out April 7)… and even more as his RL self.
Friends First
“Back when I was single, I never chatted up women I didn’t know or did the online-dating thing. My relationships usually blossomed out of friendship. It’s the best way for me to know if it’ll work. I’m not a risk taker in that sense. I want to be sure that I won’t get hurt before I get into something serious.”Open Your Heart
“When it comes to women, I’m more clumsy than smooth! I’ve never had moves the way some guys do. But I will say, I’m quite open and honest. I don’t keep my cards close to my chest.I’m not ashamed of whatI have to give.”Come As You Are
“I like someone who’s quirky. I don’t like sheep.I prefer a shepherd…or make that a shepherdess! Someone who’s her own person instead of following everyone else.And I don’t have a type—it’s not like she needs to be 5 feet 4 and brunette. I fall in love with the personality.”Love Is in the Air
“I like to think that I’m quite romantic all the time, even if it’s by doing something as simple as making my wife a cup of tea every morning. For our first official date, I flew her out to Los Angeles. She was like, ‘I’ve come all this way—what if we don’t get on?’ I said, ‘It’ll be fine.I swear. The minute you get through arrivals, I’ll kiss you.’ I did, and the rest is history. When I love someone, I want them to be happy.”(source)
Call her the Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, and undisputed Queen of Pranks.
Yes, Game of Thrones‘ Emilia Clarke is a notoriously crafty prankster, according to her Me Before You co-star Sam Claflin. Filming the tearful romance last year, her most memorable hijinks included a remote-controlled fart machine, which she would casually unleash on unsuspecting cast and crew. She also framed Claflin for “stealing” her Daenerys doll, by planting it in his bag and plastering the U.K. set with mock-up “wanted” posters.
But as a self-described clean freak, the British actor says the worst prank may have been when Clarke put fish in his socks. Claflin tells USA TODAY:
“They were brand new socks. I had worn them for only three minutes in the morning — like, literally to get from my house to work. I took them off to get into my costume and they stayed in my trailer until the very end of the day. … I don’t really like fish. It’s not my favorite smell or anybody’s. I just remember as I picked up my socks, I was like, ‘That feels odd.’ So I pulled them apart and went to put one (foot) in, and I fully gagged. I was like, ‘What?’ “
Afterward, “he made me feel so bad, oh, my God,” Clarke says. “But then I bought him three pairs of really nice socks.”
But she didn’t get off that easy: Claflin also had his share of fun at Clarke’s expense.
“I stole all her furniture, which was pretty epic,” Claflin remembers. “I stuck it all in my room, but then my room was way too overcrowded. I couldn’t move!”
It’s safe to say, these two must have April Fool’s Day on lock.
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Photoshoots & Portraits > Sessions from 2016 > 005
Sam Claflin, the 29-year old Brit best known as Finnick Odair in The Hunger Games, will break your heart this summer. Playing Will Traynor in the highly-anticipated adaptation of Jojo Moyes’ best-selling novel Me Before You (in theaters Friday), the actor is at once handsome and charismatic, sullen and seething, as a man who used to have it all but, due to a spinal-cord injury, is now confined to a wheelchair.
Getting inside that head, and body, was no easy feat. “It was trying to explore a character that I have absolutely no similarities with,” Claflin says. “As you can imagine, limiting my gestures to eye movements and mouth movements was quite difficult. I’m quite an open, flamboyant character myself.”
To replicate a quadriplegic physicality, Claflin held his body in a very specific position, at times tying his hands behind his back to become familiar with the limited movement. He lived for months with soreness in his neck, shoulders, lower back, and fingers. He also dropped close to 40 pounds over the course of production to represent Traynor’s muscular atrophy.
Despite those hurdles, Claflin, who himself dreamed of a professional soccer career before an ankle injury sidelined him, never loses the desirability that makes his caregiver, Louisa Clark (Emilia Clarke), fall in love with him. “I tried to be as witty as possible,” Claflin says. “If that comes across, I think it just proves that Emilia is so good that she can act in love. It was really kind of out of my hands.”
What was in his hands was understanding Traynor, a man who is grappling with whether or not to end his life. Director Thea Sharrock says it was Claflin’s innate empathy that led her to cast him. “Sam is unlike a lot of actors of his generation,” she says. “He has a humbleness that is very pure and real. The first time I met him, I felt straight away that this was someone who was really trying to tell me what he thought of Will, the character, not just trying to sell that he could do it well.” That was just an added bonus.
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NEW YORK — Me Before You has something most weepy romances don’t: laughs.
Writing the film version of her 2012 novel, “it was important to keep the humor going as much as the sadder elements,” author Jojo Moyes says. The fun continued after the cameras stopped rolling, say stars Sam Claflin and Emilia Clarke, who play a paralyzed man and his affable caretaker in the drama (in theaters Friday). Some of the charismatic duo’s funniest (and most painful) on-set stories:
Using a wheelchair proved more difficult than walking. To play the quadriplegic Will, Claflin practiced using a motorized wheelchair for two months. That meant “getting used to going from Point A to B, what speed I had to go at certain moments — it’s not as easy as you’d imagine,” he says. Claflin suffered only minor scrapes on his hands (from going through doorways) and never fell out of the chair, even when shooting a scene in which Louisa (Clarke) sits on his lap as they race down a dirt road at nearly 13 miles per hour. “That was the quickest I ever got it. No seat belt,” Claflin says. Clarke adds: “Yeah, you were holding me on so bad.”
Love hurts — and not just emotionally. Clarke fractured her hip midway through the shoot. That made the film’s tear-jerking climax even more difficult, as Lou dances on the beach before Will makes a startling confession. “It was super-hard anyway, from an acting point of view, because it was the most raw that we get. Then I was in so much pain,” Clarke says. Even sitting on Claflin’s lap was an almost-Olympian feat. “They had to build a little obstacle course for me,” she says. “They got all these boxes and tried to move them so I could look like I was getting on” his chair.
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Photoshoots & Portraits > Sessions from 2016 > 004
NEW YORK — To fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones,Emilia Clarke is Daenerys Targaryen, a shrewd, dragon-wielding conqueror and one of TV’s fiercest heroines.
So when Me Before You director Thea Sharrock suggested she play Louisa Clark — a spunky, idealistic young woman who takes a job caring for a wealthy, wheelchair-bound quadriplegic (Sam Claflin) — screenwriter Jojo Moyes was understandably puzzled.
“I couldn’t see it,” says Moyes, who adapted her 2012 romantic novel for the big screen (in theaters Friday). “She was, for me, irrevocably linked to long, blond hair and dragons and looking very stern. But the moment you actually see her without the (Thrones) wig, she’s so warm and bubbly, and actually has the physical look of Louisa. It really took no time at all.”
Playing someone who shares her optimistic outlook and humor was part of the appeal to Clarke, who calls Louisa (nicknamed “Lou”) a “more innocent version” of herself.
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Sam Claflin found Me Before You the most physically challenging project of his entire life.
The 29-year-old actor stars in the drama as Will Traynor, a young man who relies on carer Louisa Clark (Emilia Clarke) to look after him after being left paralysed from an accident. Although there’s little movement for his role, Sam found keeping still most of the time even more difficult than fast-paced action scenes like he experienced in The Hunger Games.
“I think this was the most physically challenging thing I have ever done in my entire life,” he told Total Film magazine. “You have to understand, to not move, to sit in a certain position, to keep my hands (still)… I was using muscles that I’d never used before. Of course, I can never fully understand what it is to live like that.”
Sam was given an insight into his character’s life after meeting with some real-life paralysed people. The process opened his eyes and made him realise how grateful he should be for little things like jumping into bed after a long day at work or even simply putting pyjamas on.
There were moments throughout filming that the British star found himself being able to relate to Will too, mainly with his alter ego’s outlook on life.
“I think there was a great deal of me in Will,” he explained. “Of course, Will has a very dark side to his personality but everyone has a darkness, and pushed to a certain point, you will meet that darkness.
“However, all it takes is one person to take you back into the light, and I think that’s exactly what happens with Will. I genuinely think his determination and passion is something I share.”
Me Before You, based on Jojo Moyes’ same-titled novel, is set to hit cinemas from June 16 (16).
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Sam is on the June issue of Red magazine and i’ve added to the gallery one scan from the issue, plus two outtakes! You can also read the interview bellow, thanks to Sam Claflin Fans!
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.
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