Sam Claflin trades Hunger Games hero for complicated chap in Their Finest

HE set hearts aflutter as a tragic hero in The Hunger Games. Now Sam Claflin is trying to work out why he’s only chosen unlikeable parts ever since.

SAM Claflin admits to feeling like a “rabbit in the headlights” when his career got on an early, blockbuster roll: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides seguing into Snow White and the Huntsman and The Hunger Games (Claflin playing Finnick Odair, a past Games winner who allied with Katniss in the last three films of the franchise).

“I was totally a fish out of water,” the Englishman admits. “I found my feet as I got going.”

Claflin is speaking from Hobart, where he’s currently filming Australian director Jennifer Kent’s thriller The Nightingale.

Claflin and his fellow actor and wife Laura Haddock after Their Finest premired at the London Film Festival last October. Picture: John Phillips/Getty Images

Finding his feet as an actor coincided with Claflin and his wife, Laura Haddock, finding out they were to become parents. (Their son was born in December 2015.)

And imminent fatherhood coincided with a strange kink in Claflin’s career path: “It’s one of those things that I’ve only just realised, that since my wife was pregnant, I have only chosen characters that are not great people,” he explains.

A quick look at Claflin’s three most recent works — last year’s hit Me Before You (wheelchair bound Will is a joyless so-and-so taking his misery out on those around him until Emilia Clarke’s Lou blows into his life), new WWII dramedy Their Finest (script writer Buckley is a male chauvinist who sneers at the arrival of a woman in his workplace until she saves his movie) and the upcoming My Cousin Rachel (Philip is falling in love with his cousin’s widow while at the same time trying to prove she’s a killer) — illustrates his point.

They’re all, as Claflin puts it, “quite interesting characters”.

Claflin as Finnick in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2. Picture: Roadshow

With Emilia Clarke in last year’s hit romance Me Before You. Picture: Roadshow

“You have to get into the head of said person and understand the reasons they’re tortured or why they’re the way they are,” he says. “That, to me, is exploring something that I’m obviously not used to — not that I’m an angel, but I feel like I am a good person, generally. So I’m interested more in people that aren’t close to who I am and therefore the darker characters seem to sing to me.”

Luckily, this actor rather enjoys the challenge of “making an unlikeable character likeable”. Or, in the particular case of Their Finest, making an “unlikeable misogynist likeable”.

Set during The Blitz in WWII, with London constantly being bombed, Lone Scherfig’s film has a who’s who of the British film industry at its disposal for its rib-tickling depiction of what was a pivotal time for women in the workplace. Popping up beside Claflin, Gemma Arterton and Bill Nighy are the likes of Jeremy Irons, Richard E. Grant, Eddie Marsan, Helen McCrory, Rachael Stirling and Jack Huston.

Sam Claflin and Gemma Arterton are propoganda filmmakers on a mission to boost British morale in new WWII dramedy Their Finest. Picture: Transmission

Claflin’s Buckley is a script writer for the Ministry of Information’s film department, which wants its next propaganda production to be one of “authenticity and optimism” to boost British morale. With the men away on the battlefields, the audience left at home for these movies is largely female.

So Arterton’s Catrin is hired (at a lower rate of pay than “the chaps” obviously) to work on this new film, Buckley telling her she’ll be writing the “slop” — the female dialogue.

“Girls don’t want to be the hero,” Buckley later adds, “they want to be had by the hero.”

Of course, as the making of the film hits hurdle after hurdle, Catrin proves herself proficient at far more than just slop; between bouts of verbal sparring, Buckley wises up to this, too.

But it’s fair to say that at the outset, he’s a man in need of some education as to what women are capable of.

Sam Claflin’s challenge on Their Finest was to make “unlikeable misogynist” script writer Buckley ultimately likable. Picture: Transmission

“Well, I think the world did, back then,” says Claflin. “And unfortunately, some of the world still needs educating now. It’s great to think how far we have come, but there’s still plenty to go. That was one of the reasons I really loved the script — it is commenting on issues that are still relevant today without force-feeding people.”

Nighy plays the actor who can’t admit he’s past his prime — his vanity and delusion providing many of the laughs.

“Having the opportunity to watch him do his thing, watch him become Ambrose Hilliard, it was spellbinding,” says Claflin. “He literally came alive. He was riffing, he was improv-ing and changing it every time ... You watch someone like that and you feel very, very blessed to be in the same room.”

Yet it wasn’t veteran Nighy’s presence that had Claflin quivering, rather Arterton’s — the Qantum of Solace and Gemma Bovery actor who, at 31, is the same age as Claflin.

The verbal sparring between Catrin (Arterton) and Buckley (Claflin) eventually leads to romantic sparks in Their Finest. Picture: Transmission

“I found myself incredibly in awe of Gemma before we even started filming,” Claflin admits. “I’ve seen quite a lot of the work she’s done up to date, so I was a little intimidated, in all honesty, when we sat down to read for the first time. She was a lot more experienced, she’d worked on incredible things ...

“But what I later realised is we are very similar as people and had very similar upbringings. So once we read through some of the scenes, the sparring was there because we were on the same page.

“It was very enjoyable to have someone who wasn’t afraid to push me where I needed to be pushed, but also wasn’t afraid to be pushed — literally, sometimes: I accidentally pushed her over during the shooting of a scene,” he laughs.

“She was really good fun.”

Sam Claflin teams with the “incredible” Rachel Weisz in period thriller My Cousin Rachel, which reaches cinemas in June. Picture: Twentieth Century Fox

Arterton isn’t the only leading lady to have given Claflin a good push lately. Rachel Weisz is his partner in the gothic romance My Cousin Rachel, based on the classic novel by Daphne Du Maurier. It will open in Australian cinemas in June.

“It’s a strange love affair-slash-thriller about him believing that she may be trying to kill him,” Claflin says. “Working with Rachel Weisz was incredible. She had my head spinning in a really wonderful way.”

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Originally published as Sam Claflin trades Hunger Games hero for complicated chap in Their Finest