‘Peaky Blinders’ Star Reveals He Suffered ‘Breakdown’

English actor Sam Claflin has been playing all sorts of characters since he had his breakout role in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire over a decade ago, from rock musician Billy Dunne in Daisy Jones & The Six to real-life fascist politician Oswald Mosley in Peaky Blinders. But his newest role tested him in ways he previously never experienced.

Claflin plays the protagonist in Amazon Prime’s new series Lazarus, a horror-thriller written by the famous mystery novelist Harlan Coben and co-starring Bill Nighy and Alexandra Roach. In the role, he felt like he was just playing himself, not a character, for the first time in his career—which opened up all sorts of new challenges.

“It definitely was new territory,” Claflin said in an interview with PEOPLE. “I think he’s very similar to me in many ways, and I’ve spent quite a lot of my career hiding behind masks or characters or physicality, and this felt like it was me — in a new city, in a new world, with new people.”

His character, a forensic psychologist investigating the suspicious death of his father, has “been hiding for so much of his life” according to Claflin. It’s that quality that made him feel as if he was looking in a mirror.

“Most of my career, I was hiding behind different masks,” Claflin said. “I’ve spent my entire life not really understanding who I am, and hiding or suppressing my emotions and not facing the facts, and yeah, I guess hiding or lying to myself.”

Playing a character so close to his own age (Claflin is 39) sent him into a bit of a midlife crisis, although Claflin said he’s “grateful for the breakdown,” calling it a “spiritual awakening.”

He was drawn to the role, in fact, for the possibility of personal growth and the similarity of the character to himself.

“That was definitely a big draw, because I feel like the older I get, the more authenticity I can bring to roles,” he said. “I’ve had a lot more experiences in my life and real-life events have happened, and it’s easier to draw on those experiences to bring them to characters — to really feel things. It’s almost therapeutic, I guess you could say.”

All six episodes of Lazarus are streaming now on Prime Video.