The last time actor Ben Starr spoke to his dad, Chris, he was on the way to a recording session for Final Fantasy XVI. Weeks later, he was reading a eulogy for his real father one day, and visiting the grave of his character Clive Rosfield's fictional one the next.
"Did I bring it to the party? No, but it's got to be affected by it," he said while sitting in Happy Face, a pizzeria in Kings Cross, London with a huge, mosaic-tiled pizza oven. "I just missed him. Nothing mattered."
As a long-time player of the series ever since his father bought him a copy of Final Fantasy VIII, landing the lead of a Final Fantasy game was, as Starr describes, everything he'd ever wanted. But it was difficult to enjoy the moment.
Final Fantasy XVI was a critical success, taking inspiration from blockbuster mega-hits like Game of Thrones to mix with the traditional Japanese role-playing roots. The game also catapulted him to fame as a performer. While he has had roles in TV ("Midsomer Murders," "You," "Jamestown") and theater ("Les Miserables," "Macbeth"), he has never quite become a household name. In games, things were different. At 2023's The Game Awards he was nominated for Best Performer.
But what comes after?
"You get to the end of the rainbow, you open the pot of gold, and lo and behold, there's loads of f------ gold in there," he tells me. "I was so happy on the one hand, but yet I was so unbelievably sad on the other. I was on a path of self-destruction."
Before his father's death, he'd visit the gym five times a week, routinely smashing out bodyweight exercises, but he stopped going altogether when the reality of what had happened hit him. He was in a depressive spiral and found himself drinking most nights -- "self-medicating and having maybe two drinks more than I should have," he said as the sun lit up his face on a chilly afternoon. "When you start drinking alone, that's when you should be worried."
Here he was, having some of the best experiences of his life, playing the main character in a series he loved, getting more recognition as an actor than ever. He had just started a Dungeons & Dragons stream with his friends called Natural Six (its first ten episodes were funded by 907 backers, who pledged £67,932 on Kickstarter), and his phone kept ringing, offering more jobs. His relationship with his partner -- Naomi Battrick, a fellow actor he met on the set of "Jamestown" -- was perfect, and so was their little dog, a Yorkshire terrier called Milton. None of it could fill the hole and he still couldn't shake the thought: "Who would miss me when I'm gone?"
He has spent the years since his father died figuring things out, using his newfound fame and notoriety to keep the momentum going, simultaneously posting silly stuff online -- deranged social media spoof videos that can only be described as if his intrusive thoughts had commissioned him on Cameo -- while he works on his next big video game project, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a flashy turn-based role-playing game that blends classic and modern sensibilities.
Sure, everything was a struggle, but he couldn't let the opportunity go to waste, and he couldn't let his dad down. He had to keep his head up high.
"He was so proud when I landed the role in Final Fantasy XVI," Starr said. "He thought it was the coolest thing."
The sense you get of Starr through his public persona is only a hint at the reality -- oddball, positive, goblinesque. It's a carefully curated mask he's worn since childhood. His mother was a social worker and his father an accountant who saved all his money to put Starr and his siblings into a private school, where Starr was captain of the cricket team, became head boy and excelled academically. It's hard to believe looking at him now -- well-muscled, a jaw that could slice his pizza, salt and pepper stubble -- but Starr said he "wasn't the best-looking guy" in his teens. He developed this madcap personality partly to compete with his peers for girls.
Sometimes he took it too far. He once burst all the blood vessels in his eyes because he downed two liters of pure orange juice after someone on a school trip bet him that he couldn't. He spent the entire trip with demon-red eyes.
"I blossomed in my 20s," he said. "I was always okay-looking, but a bit of a goof." Five minutes later, he bit the inside of his mouth. "I believe my mouth is bleeding," he said, cupping his face, before putting on a narrator's voice. "Ben's mouth bled all over the table." He's still a goof.
Starr might be outwardly cheery, but something is simmering underneath. There's pressure -- self-inflicted -- and fear of failure, but his positivity mostly wins out.
"You give me a little kingdom, a little playground, and I will find joy in that little playground," he said.
He attributes this superpower to being the youngest child, often left to his own devices. Back then, he was obsessed with the works of Jim Carrey in "Ace Ventura" and "The Mask" -- enamored by his animated, larger-than-life performances and easily mimicked turns of phrase.
"Like a glove," Starr said out the side of his mouth, attempting the best Ace Ventura impression he can muster with a mouthful of pizza.
Once the video game community's eyes were on him, after years of secrecy recording for Final Fantasy XVI, social media became his playground. Post-by-unhinged-post -- equal parts raunchy, harrowing and madcap -- the idea of Ben Starr grew into what felt like a shared understanding of an actor living his best life. But how much do we really know a stranger? We all alter our personalities to suit our surroundings to some extent, and only we can know what's bouncing around in our heads, our minds a mess of contradictions and half-formed ideas. "You're not just one thing at any one point," Starr said. "I am 35 different versions of myself battling for supremacy."
Some of what's come after that -- Balatro advertisements, a game called Date Everything, where you date inanimate objects, hosting The Golden Joysticks -- can be attributed more to Starr the goof than Starr the actor.
"It wouldn't happen without me initially playing with the Final Fantasy audience, and then just playing with the video game audience in general," Starr said.
But what lies beneath the Tifa cosplay, the actor, the goof? Under all the makeup, there's a sad clown - a side Starr doesn't often show. "When people say nice stuff about me, I look in the mirror and I don't see those things," Starr said. "So I fundamentally don't believe what that person is saying."
Speaking with people who have worked with Starr at Playstack -- Patrick Johnson, head of discovery, video artist Stephanie Mart and Nama Budhwar, lead visual marketing manager -- they all have the same story. An actor with "infectious passion" who's "kind" and a true "professional who never seems to run out of energy".
Perhaps Starr feels like it's not him that people love -- it's the mask he's been wearing, cultivated since he saw Jim Carrey vanish behind his.
"I choose not to engage with negativity online," Starr said. "I choose not to do that so I come across like an incredibly positive person. That's not to say I don't get sad, or I don't get hurt. I get really hurt."
Starr's father was the person who shared his wins, who he called to tell he'd landed another role -- the person he told his dreams to, and now he was gone.
"That's when you lean on your friends," he said, "but I was too scared to see my friends because I was so nervous that I was lying to them in some capacity [when I told them I was fine]."
Counseling and a strong support network have him in a much better place now, even though talking about his problems doesn't come naturally to him. When faced with a mirror and told to talk about your feelings and extract the root causes, it can be an uncomfortable process, which is an alien place for Starr, who's "always gone for the path of least resistance." If he's on a night out drinking and there's a queue at the bar, he'd rather sit at a table and watch for an opening than stand queuing. He's always looking for ways to cut hassle out of his life.
You can see that attitude manifest in his approach to landing work. The acting profession is filled with gatekeepers who decide who gets their shot, but Starr now finds himself in a position where he's sometimes making opportunities for himself and bypassing those walls.
"Some of the coolest s--- that I've got to do is because casting directors have reached out and worked with me," Starr said. "But I've also just gone straight to the source and said, 'I want to be a part of this project.'"
Through a real love and understanding for video games, he's found the one spot at the bar where no one's holding their credit card out, tucked his elbows, and slipped right in to get served straight away.
This year, you'll see another side of Starr in the French JRPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, where he plays the mysterious Verso. The game's creative director, Guillaume Broche, sold him on the project by sending him a video of a player exploring the map.
"It was the characters running around the overworld map with the music to Final Fantasy VIII playing over the top," Starr said. It's a game that the two -- director and actor -- are incredibly passionate about. "We joked that during the press cycle, we were just gonna stand in the pulpit and deliver the sermon of Final Fantasy VIII to the world."
It pulled him right back to the day he unwrapped Final Fantasy VIII, popped Disc One into his PlayStation, and sat cross-legged, controller in hand, as his dad watched him play. It was a reminder that while his dad may be gone, the impact he had on Starr -- on his love for games, how he views projects, and what work he wants to continue doing in the medium -- will never leave.