Seasick Sam Claflin: ‘Sailing is not for me’

Sam Claflin has decided sailing isn’t for him after throwing up while filming his new movie on the open ocean.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire actor stars alongside Shailene Woodley in Adrift, which tells the true story of Tami Oldham and Richard Sharp, a couple who had to fight for their lives after sailing into a hurricane while traversing the Pacific Ocean.

Sam had to go on a restrictive diet to slim down for the role, and admits he soon discovered that it was a bad idea to head out to sea on an empty stomach.

“I quickly realised that it (sailing) wasn’t for me,” the seasick actor said at a Q&A session following a screening of the movie in London.

“I wasn’t eating very much and I’d set out with three or four coffees first thing in the morning with no food and apparently that’s a recipe for disaster on a boat. Shailene was literally rubbing my back as I was puking out of the boat.”

The film’s director Baltasar Kormakur was a competitive sailor in his youth, but the rest of his cast and crew struggled with shooting at sea - despite the gorgeous surroundings of the South Pacific.

“Day one on the open ocean we were all taking selfies, thinking wow we’re all in Fiji on the back of a yacht, this is dreamy, we can watch the sunrise - it was amazing,” the 31-year-old recalled. “About an hour or two hours into the day the first crew member emerged from beneath the decks and was looking pale as a ghost and beyond him there was another twelve people hurling.”

Explaining how being at sea had taken its toll on almost all the crew, he added: “Everyone bar Baltasar and Bob Richardson, the cinematographer, threw up.”

Adrift is in cinemas now.