PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION Star Tom Blyth for MEN’S HEALTH Magazine

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Men might be in crisis. but Tom Blyth sure isn’t. From PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION to WASTEMAN, the British-born Julliard-trained actor has made a career of playing male leads who represent what he sees as the elastic nature of masculinity. In conversation with MEN’S HEALTH for the latest MH FLEX, the 31-year-old rising star opens up about masculinity, mental health, and the intentional construction of a career built for longevity.

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On how embodying the physicality of characters helps get into their psychology:

“A lot of the time, I start with the voice of a character and how they sound. But that’s intrinsically linked to the body, because where you carry your weight and where you lead from in your body changes your voice. I think we all change our voice depending on who we’re speaking to, where we are, or what the objective is of why we’re saying what we’re saying. Voice, movement, and bodily rhythms are where I always begin. For Dee, it was very much that.”

On whether he is intentionally stacking contradictory experiences and styles with the projects he’s released recently:

“I think you’re right. To a certain extent, there’s definitely a wanting to counterbalance the last thing you’ve done a little bit. You hear this from actors all the time, but you never want to do the same thing twice. For some people, it works really well. They find that niche, and they get really good at it. If I’ve done something in the past year, I’m not touching it again with a 10-foot barge pole. Not because I didn’t love it, but because the reason I’m an actor is that I want to keep stretching my skin and finding out if my empathy meter can stretch so far in another direction.

I don’t want to become stuck playing one kind of person, either. On a simple level, I enjoy endeavoring to be a chameleon. Sometimes, you achieve that better than others. But I think that’s what makes this job so interesting.”

On ping-ponging between different genres and not wanting to be pigeonholed:

“I’m always looking to do something different. Most of my favorite contemporary actors who are alive today, and were the reason I moved to the States for drama school, are people who you can’t pin down. You can’t really pigeonhole Oscar Isaac: he’s done comedies; he’s done massive sci-fi franchises; he’s done tiny indie crime dramas.

“I think I’m like that in life as well. I f*cking hate boxes, I really do. I find it so boring that we live in a world now where people seem so keen to identify themselves by the tramlines that they think they must stay within. Identity is useful up to a certain point, but it can also be really limiting. I’ve always felt like my identity is very flexible, and it’s often a mirror of the environment I’m in. I don’t know if that’s healthy or not, or if it’s good. But I want my work to be like that and to be a furtherance of that.”

On conversations about the construction of masculinity being everywhere at the moment:

“It’s funny how, as a culture, we get so fixated on trying to dissect one thing. I get it’s because of the bizarre manosphere thing that has happened over the past few years. This idea that men are in a particularly tough time in history, I don’t actually buy. I don’t think we are. I think we’re not used to not being the center of attention, and all of a sudden, it’s making us go, ‘Oh god, it’s so hard for us right now. How do we define ourselves? Nobody wants to let us be men!’ And it’s not true.”

On his view of masculinity:

“You can be a gentleman, a provider, and a protector, all those things that have historically made men men. And you can also be gentle, a listener, and someone who allows women equal opportunity and doesn’t have to take things away from other people in order for you to gain. You can be all those things at once. You don’t have to define yourself as one thing. Sometimes we just overthink it. I suppose if I’ve learned anything from all the various types of men I’ve played in TV and film, it would be that there’s no one answer to what it is. Ambition is the throughline. Their ambition is what derails the personal needs of the characters, and they’re at odds with each other.”

[Photo Credit: Rona Ahdout for Men’s Health Magazine]

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