From Billy the Kid to The Hunger Games: who is Tom Blyth, the amazing Coriolanus Snow?
Revealed in the skin of the famous Wild West bandit, the 28-year-old British actor hits the screen in The Ballad of the Serpent and the Songbird, where he takes on the character played by Donald Sutherland in the original quadrilogy .
Of course, The Ballad of the Serpent and the Songbird dedicate Rachel Zegler as a new Hollywood star, after his acclaimed performance in the West Side Story by Steven Spielberg and while waiting for the Snow White from Disney. But alongside the rising actress, a young, almost unknown English actor bursts onto the screen in the new Hunger Games. With her peroxide blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, Tom Blyth is quietly making a name for himself in the industry.
“I’m a physical person, I like learning new skills for my roles. Like riding a horse or shooting a gun to Billy the Kid“, the actor told us in 2022, present at the Séries Mania festival in Lille to talk about his major western series.
It is indeed in the shoes of the Wild West bandit that Tom Blyth got noticed in Hollywood.
While the creator of VikingsMichael Hirst, is developing a new big-budget historical series, recounting the conquest of the West from the point of view of this trigger-happy kid from Irish immigration, he is banking on this totally actor for his first role. unknown to the battalion, but with an elusive look and an undeniable presence: “I loved playing Billy the Kid, because I was always a big fan of Westerns as a kid, even growing up in the north of England. My grandmother was a bookseller and when I came home from school I read a lot…” confided to us this son of a producer of Coronation Street (Gavin Blyth), the cult British soap, which does not hesitate to give of itself to put itself in the shoes of its characters.
For Hunger Games, Tom Blyth thus underwent a major physical transformation, dyeing his brown locks icy blonde and losing weight to achieve the skeletal figure of this young Coriolanus Snow. “It was an intense process… I basically just ate apple wedges and almond butter for six months ” he confides to Variety.
It must be said that from a very young age, Tom Blyth is attracted to the plateaus. As a child, he landed a role as an extra in the Robin Hood by Ridley Scott (he played a wild child). Then the Englishman, now an adult, left to train at Juilliard in the famous New York art school. He then stood out in the small English film Scott and Sid, acclaimed by the press across the Channel. Then find a place in The Gilded Ageprestigious HBO series by Julian Fellowes
Tom Blyth likes complex roles, which say something about today’s world. This was the case with Billy the Kidwhich depicted a brutal, even xenophobic America, where immigrants (particularly Irish) and the poor were marginalized. “We tell stories because we want to explore our societies, learn more about us”analyzed Blyth for Première when talking about Billy the Kid“a complex character, with moral values but who is never where we expect him.” And from America’s Wild West to Panem, there is only one step that the actor took without difficulty by putting himself in the shoes of this young Coriolanus Snow. As for the legendary western bandit, “What made Snow become evil? Are people born evil? These are questions I asked myself when approaching the character of Snow“, explains the 28-year-old actor to Variety. “People think they know the character. I don’t hope that they will find him sympathetic, but that they will understand him a little more and understand what motivates him.”
After his explosion in Hunger Games,- in theaters since Wednesday in France – we should quickly find Tom Blyth, on our screens. The Englishman from Birmingham risks climbing the ranks in Hollywood at high speed. “I had the opportunity to meet directors that I really like“, he reveals to W Magazine, teasing his upcoming participation in the adaptation of an American classic by one of his favorite authors… To be continued.
