Sam Claflin Opens Up About Body Dysmorphia and the Pressure of Hollywood Roles

Sam Claflin is speaking candidly about how Hollywood’s beauty standards took a toll on his mental health, revealing that his body dysmorphia was made worse by acting roles that pushed him to look a certain way.

Appearing on Happy Place with host Fearne Cotton, the actor said that being asked to appear shirtless early in his career left him feeling anxious and insecure.

“A lot of the roles I played earlier on… I had a topless scene in one of my first movies, but it wasn’t in the script,” Claflin shared. He explained that he was told just a week before filming that he would need to take his shirt off. “I was like, ‘I haven’t been working out, what am I going to do?’ That was my first introduction to the world.”

Claflin rose to fame playing Finnick Odair in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, but his film debut came earlier in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Even then, he says self-doubt was already creeping in.

“I’m incredibly insecure,” he admitted. “I just went to a screening of a film I was in and people asked, ‘How was it?’ and I said, ‘I hated it.’ It’s my face I don’t like. When I was cast in ‘Pirates,’ I thought, ‘What on earth am I doing here?’”

In a 2025 interview with The Telegraph, Claflin said the industry’s obsession with six-pack abs added even more pressure. “There’s this Hollywood assumption that it’s the men with the six packs who sell the movie,” he said. “As a result, I developed a form of body dysmorphia. It wasn’t quite an eating disorder, but it was definitely because of the industry I’m in.”

Expanding on that during the podcast, Claflin explained that the struggle hasn’t gone away. “I’ve been massively affected,” he said. “It’s an everyday struggle. I am massively impacted by what other people think and whether they think I look good or I’m a nice person.”

After his franchise success, Claflin showed a different side of himself in films like Me Before You and indie projects such as Their Finest and Adrift. More recently, his performance as Billy Dunne in Daisy Jones & the Six earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

By sharing his story, Claflin hopes to shine a light on an issue many men quietly face — and to remind others in the spotlight, and those watching from home, that confidence doesn’t always come with fame.