Sam Claflin gets real about male body-shaming in Hollywood: 'I felt like a piece of meat'

Body confidence is not a gender-specific issue.

In a new interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, British actor Sam Claflin opened up about the physical pressure he's felt as a male actor in Hollywood.

"I remember doing one job when they literally made me pull my shirt up and were grabbing my fat and going 'you need to lose a bit of weight,'" said the 30-year-old, who starred in Me Before You and played Finnick Odair in The Hunger Games series. "This other time they were slapping me. I felt like a piece of meat."

And the dad to 18-month-old son Pip (with his actress wife Laura Haddock) is adamant that his experience isn't a rarity.

"I read in an interview recently and I think it's absolutely true: men have it just as bad [as women]," he says. "Well, not just as bad but they get it bad and it's never talked about."

"I'm not saying it's anywhere near as bad as what women go through but I, as an actor approaching each job, am insecure — especially when I have to take my top off in it — and so nervous," he continued. "I get really worked up to the point where I spend hours and hours in the gym and not eating for weeks to achieve what I think they're going for."

Sam, who recently spent three months filming thriller The Nightingale in Tasmania, sees the male fitness obsession as a recent trend.

"In the '50s and '60s, it was never an issue," he says. "James Bond never had a six pack. He had a hairy chest. Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire had an incredible body but he was by no means ripped to within an inch of his life. There's a filter on society that this is normal, but actually it's anything but normal."