‘A tipping point of ickiness’: Welsh star Tom Rhys Harries on playing eyelid-snipping DC supervillain Clayface

He cut his teeth playing rock stars and pretty posh boys. Speaking from his LA home, the actor talks about landing his first blockbuster lead in the grisly DC horror. Will it be too shocking for comic book fans?

Exactly 13 years ago this month, Tom Rhys Harries was hanging by his ankles from a meat hook every night. Playing a teenage rock’n’roll idol abducted by gangsters in a revival of Jez Butterworth’s Mojo, Harries was fresh out of drama school and the only unknown in a cast led by Ben Whishaw and Rupert Grint. The Guardian’s Michael Billington likened him to “an embryonic Elvis”.

Now the 36-year-old Cardiff-born actor has the title role in Clayface, a violent DC Comics supervillain blockbuster set in Batman’s stomping ground, Gotham City. This puts him in the company of fellow Brits in the comic-book universe, such as Tom Holland (Spider-Man), Robert Pattinson (Batman) and David Jonsson, recently announced as the new Black Panther. “I felt ready to do this,” says Harries. “Had I been younger, I’d have been suffocated by the insecurity of wanting to do a good job but not having that quiet trust in getting there.”

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