Tuesday
Mar242015
Sam Claflin in GQ
Molly Tue, March 24, 2015 
Sam Claflin has a short and sweet little fashion feature in April GQ but he also talks getting that Finnick glow ("I was never sure whether to leave underwear on or take underwear off in the tanning bed.") plus The Riot Club:
Perhaps no demographic has benefited more from the rise of teen-movie franchises than young Brits. Twilight's Robert Pattinson, Theo James of Divergent, the Hemsworth brothers (Aussie, but same deal). The latest in the invasion is Sam Claflin, best known to American audiences as Finnick Odair from the last couple of Hunger Games. When we meet Finnick in the second film, he looks like a SoCal bro who "forgot" to put on a shirt. In the latest, the third, Mockingjay, Part I (try to keep up), he's in gulag grays and suffering PTSD but somehow no less winning.
Claflin, who got into acting at 16 after giving up his dreams of soccer, says that after The Hunger Games he was eager to play something other than a hunk with a trident. In this spring's The Riot Club, a satire about a fictitious dining club at Oxford, he's a one-percenter who gets to unironically scream lines like "I am sick to fucking death of poor people!" and throw his champagne glass at the wall. Despite the regal jawline and tousled locks, Claflin himself grew up working- class. What he found most surprising about these societies wasn't simply how money can buy you out of anything, but also how thuggish these groups of supposed gentlemen can be. There's a moment in the film when someone insinuates that they're acting no better than schoolkids with bricks. "My character takes huge offense because We're gentlemen, we've got money—we're not thugs. But it's basically just gang culture in the upper class." The Hunger Games also treads in class warfare, though the chief concern playing Finnick, Claflin admits, was that "I was never sure whether to leave underwear on or take underwear off in the tanning bed."
Claflin, who got into acting at 16 after giving up his dreams of soccer, says that after The Hunger Games he was eager to play something other than a hunk with a trident. In this spring's The Riot Club, a satire about a fictitious dining club at Oxford, he's a one-percenter who gets to unironically scream lines like "I am sick to fucking death of poor people!" and throw his champagne glass at the wall. Despite the regal jawline and tousled locks, Claflin himself grew up working- class. What he found most surprising about these societies wasn't simply how money can buy you out of anything, but also how thuggish these groups of supposed gentlemen can be. There's a moment in the film when someone insinuates that they're acting no better than schoolkids with bricks. "My character takes huge offense because We're gentlemen, we've got money—we're not thugs. But it's basically just gang culture in the upper class." The Hunger Games also treads in class warfare, though the chief concern playing Finnick, Claflin admits, was that "I was never sure whether to leave underwear on or take underwear off in the tanning bed."
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