Sam Claflin Finds His Voice: How the ‘Hunger Games’ Scene-Stealer Became a Rockstar in ‘Daisy Jones & the Six’
variety.comSam Claflin was preparing to audition for the role of Billy Dunne in “Daisy Jones & the Six,” the Prime Video adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling novel about a fictional 1970s rock band, he was told he’d have to sing a ’70s rock song.
The trouble was, Claflin, a U.K.-born actor who admits music has never been his thing, didn’t know any. So he scoured the Apple Music app for a genre playlist and chose the only track he felt comfortable with. “I went into a recording studio for the first time in my life, confronted with a microphone and people watching me in a fishbowl,” Claflin says. “I sang Elton John’s ‘Your Song.’ Terribly.” Meeting for matcha lattes in West Hollywood, I’m almost taken aback by Claflin’s instant, overwhelming warmth.
There’s no need to ease into things — Claflin doesn’t break eye contact for most of our conversation and interrupts my questions with his own.
From the moment we meet, he’s an open book. At 36, Claflin is not new to auditioning: He landed his first film role in 2011 with “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” and has since shown an impressive range, as Will Traynor in the tearjerker “Me Before You” and the ruthless fascist Oswald Mosley in “Peaky Blinders.” But he’s most recognizable from his role as Finnick Odair from the “Hunger Games” franchise — he played the charismatic revolutionary in 2013’s “Catching Fire” and the subsequent two “Mockingjay” movies.
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