Claflin transforms for every role
From ‘Me Before You’ to ‘Corrupted,’ flexibility’s key
LOS ANGELES – British actor Sam Claflin has always found a way to put the heartthrob in his most diverse roles — from Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides to The Hunger Games.
But Claflin, 31, has stepped out to promote his new film Adrift (in theaters now) looking fierce, with the remnants of a shaved head. That look is from his just-finished drama The Corrupted, headed to screens in 2019.
“I played a boxer, so I just shaved my head. They took it all off,” he says. “It was all very different.”
Claflin knows this is a far cry from his popular role as Will Traynor, the upperclass quadriplegic who falls in love with Emilia Clarke’s Lou in the 2016 romantic drama Me Before You.
“I have tendency to play characters with money. I don’t know why or how. But that’s how it’s worked out,” says Claflin, who had his second child, a daughter, with actress wife Laura Haddock in January. “But this ( Corrupted) character has real working-class roots.”
The actor and former soccer standout, who grew up in Norwich, England, says the persona he brought for The Corrupted is the “closest to my actual self that I have played, bizarrely, but it’s the side of me that no one has seen before.”
His character, Liam, is released from prison and tries to set up a new life, but he comes up against Clifford Cullen (Timothy Spall), head of a local crime syndicate.
Professionally, transformations can get strange in the long term. Claflin has never needed to hit Supercuts.
“I was realizing that I had never chosen a haircut for myself since before drama school,” he says. “I kind of grow it in between jobs. They cut it for me. And I grow it again.”
Before shooting Adrift, the 5-foot-11 actor let himself go, peaking at 210-plus pounds for his role in the thriller The Nightingale, set in 1820s Australia. He plays a man pursued through the Tasmanian wilderness by a young Irish convict seeking revenge for the murder of her husband.
“That was the biggest I had ever been,” Claflin says. “It was not muscle, I was fat. For me, anyway.”
Claflin was still carrying extra weight when he arrived in Fiji to play adventure enthusiast Richard Sharp alongside Shailene Woodley’s Tami Oldham in Adrift. Director Baltasar Kormákur was taken aback, because Claflin had been cast as a man stranded at sea with his fiancée (Woodley) — desperately short of food after their sailboat is caught in a hurricane.
“I remember Balt seeing me and going, ‘Oh, God, I’ve cast this guy as a sailor,’ “Claflin recalls, laughing. “I was like, ‘Don’t worry, I have it under control. I know what to do.’ I’ve done it enough to know I can crash diet and it will be fine.”
You learn these things when you “change quite drastically” for parts, he says.
“I don’t really have a sense of identity anymore. I feel like I’m an amalgamation of characters, a shell of a man,” he jokes. “But I relish these roles with physical changes.”