Sam Claflin talks Finnick Odair and The Hunger Games in the latest edition of the UK bi-annual GQ Style, accompanied by some gorgeous photos shot by Matthew Brookes.
"I wasn't in the right shape for Finnick for the audition. I had stubble and there was a picture of me at a premiere and everyone was like: who is this guy? He doesn't even have blue eyes, let alone copper-coloured hair, a tan or a six pack."
But he won the fans over thanks to a restricted diet of egg-white omelettes and porridge, and a brutal training regime: "Three hours a day, five days a week for four months."
That and his impressive performance, which I realise from our conversation, is an exemplar of the technical complexity of acting in big-budget blockbusters. As well as staying in his American accent and bearing the emotion of the scene, he had to develop a kind of muscle memory for the intricately mapped out actions sequences all "without hitting someone with the trident."
Technical, then, and tiring. He was mostly in Atlanta working long days for ten months shooting the last installments of The Hunger Games movies and was thrilled, when I spoke to him, to be back home in west London, which he loves.
"You can live an anonymous life here in a way that you can't in Los Angeles."
"You can live an anonymous life here in a way that you can't in Los Angeles."
At the moment his fame is nowhere near the R-Patz level of hysteria and he walks about untroubled by pestering fans. Come Christmas though, I wonder if this will still be true, but either way, he doesn't have a plan for the next five years. "I'm just excited about what's around the corner."
These photos are courtesy of our friends at Sam Claflin Fans, so please visit their site for the full scans of the article and more pictures.
Bonus photo: Sam Claflin portrait by Jeff Vespa taken while Sam was at TIFF promoting The Riot Club.
