‘Hunger Games taught me that I don’t act to get attention’

Ellie Muir, The Independent

Tom Blyth is about to get extremely popular. In a few months’ time, the British actor’s steely blue eyes and tousled Caesar haircut will be beamed into living rooms across the world as Netflix’s latest streaming heartthrob. People We Meet on Vacation is based on the romcom bestseller by Emily Henry, and will inevitably take Blyth’s fame stratospheric. But Blyth himself doesn’t seem remotely phased. “It’ll probably last five minutes,” he shrugs. “Then I’ll be back to walking my dog.”

The fleeting nature of things is a recurring topic when I meet the 30-year-old in central London. He’s fresh off the Eurostar from Paris Fashion Week — he was a special guest at YSL’s show — but even the excitement of that glitzy environment was brief. “You’re in this elite world for about five minutes and then you step back into real life,” he tells me. And when we discuss the resulting fanfare of headlining one of 2023’s biggest blockbusters — the action prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes — he says it was short-lived, and “calmed down very quickly”.

Blyth is remarkably bashful considering he’s becoming one of Britain’s most in-demand young actors. The proof is in the pudding — he’s currently promoting four upcoming projects at once. He’s just been in Toronto talking up The Fence — his new drama with the celebrated French auteur Claire Denis — and is due at London Film Festival this month to launch his gritty prison movie Wasteman. Then in January there’s People We Meet..., while today we’re discussing Plainclothes, a romantic thriller that marks his most complex work to date. He arrives wearing a slick black leather jacket, dark jeans and black cowboy boots, and there’s a buoyant energy about him: he’s a big knee-slapper and finger-clicker throughout conversation, like a one-man band making music with his limbs. In Plainclothes, Blyth is Lucas, a young, closeted cop serving as an undercover policeman for the NYPD in the 1990s.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes taught him not to become fixated on the buzz surrounding new releases. “In this age of social media, everything’s hot for a minute and then the next thing comes out,” he says, his legs crossed as he leans back into his chair. “It taught me really quickly not to buy into (things) too much. And I’m glad it happened when I was 27 and not when I was 19 or 20. I was like, ‘I know why I do this. It’s not for the attention. It’s for the love of it.’”

What’s been less ephemeral, though, is his close friendship with his Songbirds & Snakes co-star Rachel Zegler, who Blyth says is “like a little sister” to him. I ask about the various public backlashes Zegler has faced in recent months — she has been vocal about her views on racism, feminism and Trump voters, and has experienced waves of trolling and criticism as a result. Blyth says that she’s taken it all in her stride. “It’s just such a harsh world out there, especially for a young woman doing what we do,” he says.

While Blyth isn’t politically outspoken like Zegler, I wonder if he feels any pressure to vocalise his opinions online (after all, he has a million followers on Instagram). He prefers to keep his cards close to his chest. “I’m political, and very active and vocal, in my personal life,” he says decisively. “I don’t always talk about it when it comes to work. I’m not always asked, but I wouldn’t shy away from it. I think my job is to be an actor and while not everyone needs to be shouting their views from the rooftops all the time, I do it in my day-to-day life.”

Born in Birmingham and later growing up in Nottingham after his parents divorced, Blyth trained at the Nottingham Television Workshop and then at the National Youth Theatre. He secured his first screen credit at the age of 14, playing a feral child in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood in 2010.