Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy
Edward Thomas "Tom" Hardy is an English actor, screenwriter, and producer. He made his debut in Ridley Scott's 2001 action film Black Hawk Down. Hardy's other notable films include the science fiction film Star Trek: Nemesis, the crime film RocknRolla, biographical psychological drama Bronson, science fiction thriller Inception, sports drama Warrior, Cold War espionage film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, crime drama Lawless, drama Locke, mobster film The Drop, and the biographical western thriller The Revenant, for which he received an...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth15 September 1977
CityLondon, England
Nobody paid any attention career-wise to me in America until 'Bronson.' It gave me a calling card and passage into America, where I've always wanted to work.
It's about the characters, it's about the film, it's about the process of making stunning visuals and a huge, epic movie. It doesn't matter if my head was covered in a black plastic bag and I was bouncing around in a space hopper: That's the villain of Chris Nolan's 'Batman!'
I'm here to challenge myself and to see whether I can shape-shift in an environment that's actually quite daunting, but which I think would be nice to shine a light into. The destination of any interesting drama is that you shine a light into a place that not many people know about.
Ju jitsu is very Buddhist. All that we fear we hold close to ourselves to survive. So if you're drowning and you see a corpse floating by, hang on to it because it will rescue you.
I'm a nice middle class public schoolboy who underachieved and wasn't going anywhere fast. I didn't get any GCSEs or A-levels. But everyone was like: "Please, will you do something?" And I was thinking: "Well, I kind of like the idea of joining the French Foreign Legion."
The only thing I can do is wipe my arse, brush my teeth, turn up and do the best work I can.
Then there's your diet. You cut out sugars, fat, soy sauces... anything that's nice. Tea and coffee is replaced by boiling water with lemon. It's amazing how quickly you get into it. There's also herbal tea and a lot of water, obviously... about two litres a day.
The characters I've played have been mostly violent, and I'm so far from being violent or aggressive. I spend a lot of time watching 'Fireman Sam' with my three-year-old son Louis.
I'm incredibly grateful to be playing the villain in a world which, if I really thought to hard about what I was doing, I would get very nervous about the size and the magnitude of the importance and responsibility of being a villain in the world of 'Batman.'