Sam Claflin is still how I picture Barney Snaith. When I said that in the first book club, I was told he was 'too handsome' like it's a bad thing, well you can have a Barney as ugly as you like, EYE like my men handsome. Jane Eyre I am not. (Although, last year I had some people agree with me!) It's not like the book is being adapted and if that happens, Sam is 40 now so he'll be too old anyway. Also he's British and anything LMM should probably cast Canadian actors.
There's things that actually speak in Sam's favour: he has dimples (his trademark, as stated on his IMDb page), Barney is described as having them. LMM liked dimples generally, she mentions them in almost all of her series, she’d like Sam if she knew him. Secondly—the eyes. Sam's eyes are deep green-blue oceans, so not the same colour as Barney's. But, more importantly, they are intense. If you watch him in anything, you will see the way he looks at people, especially his love interests. When this guy looks at you, you know he looks at you. I can say that for sure bc I have met him at a convention. (When I came face to face with him for the first time, I saw his eyes and nothing else. Seriously. Like a romance novel.)
Also it's about the energy. If Sam read the book, I'm certain he would love it and want to play the part. He is a romantic, from what I can gather from his interviews. He can do both the swoonworthy love interest—and I'm saying it as someone who hates his most popular film role, Me Before You, and also Love Rosie (I just don't see anything romantic about a depressed, suicidal quadriplegic or a guy who goes off and dates other women who look the complete opposite of you while keeping you on the back burner as his 'best friend')—the outcast living on his own terms and the guy who dislocates a creep's jaw at a party equally well. And a setting with that much nature and greenery would bring the best out of his eyes (see also, Philip in the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film).
The pic on the left is from the Count of Monte Cristo series, at the point where Edmond escapes from prison, before he takes on the persona of the count; he steals some clothes and a pair of scissors from a farm and (the series doesn't show this but it is clearly so) cuts his long prison hair and beard, hence why he looks like that. Barney at his most 'jailbird' look, methinks.
