'Climax': Welsh star Tom Rhys-Harris as supervillain Plec Winn Clayface

He cut his teeth playing rock stars and posh boys. Speaking from his home in Los Angeles, the actor talks about landing his first major role in the DC horror film. Will it be too shocking for comic book fans? Exactly 13 years ago this month, Tom Rhys Harris hung from a meat hook by his ankles every night. Harris stars as a teenage rock'n'roll idol who is mobbed by gangsters in the Mojo revival

Exactly 13 years ago this month, Tom Rhys Harris hung from a meat hook by his ankles every night. Playing a teenage rock and roll idol kidnapped by gangsters in Butterworth's revival of Mojo, Harris was fresh out of drama school and the only unknown in a cast led by Ben Whishaw and Rupert Grint. The Guardian's Michael Billington likened him to an "embryonic Elvis".

Now the 36-year-old Cardiff-born actor stars in Clayface, a violent DC Comics supervillain blockbuster set in Batman's Gotham City. This puts him in the ranks of Brits like Tom Holland (Spider-Man), Robert Pattinson (Batman) and David Johnson, who have recently been announced as the new Black Panther. "I felt like I was ready to do it," Harris says. "If I had been younger, I would have been suffocated by the insecurity of wanting to do something well but not having that quiet confidence to get there."

The double quotes of this test lasted for three months. How did I stay healthy? I did not do this

Harris is speaking via video call from the home near the beach in Los Angeles that he shares with his girlfriend, Amy Allen. He's the professional musician of the two: Grammy Songwriter of the Year two years in a row, no less, for his work with Sabrina Carpenter and others. Still, it's Harris who rocks this morning, even all this time post-mojo, in a gray denim shirt with a silver chain on her tanned skin and assorted silver rings on her fingers. Still, the gym crowd is lacking. Standing to close the door, she draws attention to her fake fashion. "I'm wearing a smart shirt, but these," he laughs, pointing to his navy blue shorts. "Party below, business above. Classic Zoom."

Harris has earned the right to rest. He spent three months playing the heavily mutilated title character Clayface for producers James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Matt Reeves (Batman). How did he stay healthy all this time? "I didn't."

His character is rising star Matt Hagen, who just received his first Oscar nomination, when he sleeps with the girlfriend of a razor-sharp mob boss and pays the price. With his face slashed to ribbons and his career in tatters, Matt's only hope lies in blind scientist Dr. Caitlin Corr (Naomi Aki) and her miracle serum. This restores her beautiful appearance and gives her the power to change her appearance at will but has the side effect of instability. In one scene, her eyelids melt, forcing her to remove the sticky mess with a pair of nail clippers. Described by Harris as "the pinnacle of the disease in the film," it's a moment that will be irritating to anyone with conjunctivitis and disgusting to everyone else.

Clayface is closer to horror than anything else in a superhero story. Old age, pride and celebrity. Despite being a pretty boy actor playing a pretty boy actor, Harris eschews any personal resonance in his film about losing face. "I am not interested in the vanity of it." Her appearance, she says, "happens to be an aspect of my work."

He may be an accomplished actor, but it's his otherworldly looks that draw you in: piercing eyes, a square, chiseled face, a defiant chin and loose vanilla hair. What does he see when he looks in the mirror? “I don't know, man,” he says, contemplating analyzing his own appearance. However, it has been integral to films such as 2016's folkloric horror The Crow, where he displays a Bowie-like alien quality as a teenage jungle mystic. "An alien Bowie-like quality," he thinks. "You're not the first person to say that. It's not my job to comment on that. If I get too caught up in aesthetics, I'll hit a creative roadblock very quickly."

Bowie was also a reference point in Harris' first film role in 2011. Not only was Hunky Dory, starring Minnie Driver as an inspirational teacher, named after one of the singer's albums, but it also featured a scene in which Harris leads his classmates in a mandolin and brass rendition of The Man Who Sold the World. Screen International singled out Harris as one of the actors who "may eventually become a star here".

He was oblivious to the buzzing. "And yet, the negative comments are etched in my mind." To prove his point, he quotes one of his early days. "It said, 'Newcomer Tom Rhys Harris is out of his depth'. I read that and thought, 'I don't know if I'm going to get out of bed today.'

The son of two teachers in Welsh-speaking schools, Harris has his parents to thank for being "ahead of the curve" to test him for hyperactivity at the age of seven. “I don't think I would have done it if I didn't have ADHD. I notice traits within myself that I think are fairly normal with [conditions]. If I'm passionate about something, I overprove it. It comes from the comfort of being able to zero in on something because it gives your brain a break.

The school was a struggle. "I was very naughty. I can really see a fork in the road that my life could have taken a different path if it hadn't been for my teachers and coaches supporting me." This realization instilled in him the need to prove himself. "It's about paying those people back," he says.

He went to drama school, auditioned for Hunky Dory in his first year, went from Bowie to Elvis with Mojo, and has been building his career ever since: he played boyish roles in the horror comedy Slaughterhouse Rulez, where he was a boarding school bully, and opposite a guy who hijacks a TV. He went wild as an Ibizan DJ who meets an unhappy end in Netflix's murder mysteries, then joined Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche in Homer's The Return, which turned The Odyssey into the post.

However, he's never been as stoic as Clayface. The creepy and scary special effects may be the main attraction, but the film doesn't matter without his notes of anger, agony and vulnerability.

Still, there's no escaping the fact that Clayface comes at an uncertain time for comic books without Batman, Spider-Man, or the Avengers. Box office disasters such as The Marvels, Joker: Folie à Deux and Supergirl, Clayface's recent DC Comics co-star, which is projected to lose more than $100 million, indicate that fatigue has set in.

In this case, Harris's glass is half full. "That's what excites me about Clayface," he says. He tries to do something different in the space where he has this request. "The medium needs to change and I hope people feel they can support the film simply on the basis that it gives the studios the confidence to experiment."

It seems unlikely that, after Tom Cruise's big-budget Digger disaster and the recent merger between Warner Bros. and Paramount, studios will be inclined to do anything but play it safe, regardless of whether Clayface wins or Tanks. "Who's to say? Nobody expected Backrooms or Obsession to come out of nowhere and do what they did. It's an unknown quantity."

Time will tell if Harris is an industry prognosticator, but he is undoubtedly a star. Face it.