Tom Hardy
by Sir David Michael, Lodown Magazine #76, May 2011
Tom Hardy today is finally where he first expected to be nine years ago, on the verge of being a real contender. Appearing in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, Hardy threatened to buck the general trend of actors failing to make successful career away from the franchise. His brooding portrayal of the tormented bad guy Shinzon, hinted that Hardy was destined for much greater things, adding to his reputation from roles in Black Hawk Down and the acclaimed mini TV-series Band of Brothers.
Having met him at the time in the surreal setting of a Star Trek exhibition in London’s Hyde Park, sitting with him just metres away from the
set of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise from the original 1960’s TV-series. What wasn’t public knowledge then was that Hardy was caught up in a maelstrom of drink and crack addiction.
It threatens to undo everything. A year later, he collapsed of Soho’s Old Compton Street after a crack blowout and finally headed to rehab. Sitting with Lodown now in a London hotel, Hardy’s raspy cigarette-tainted voice flirts between well to-do and London street. There’s no doubt there’s a wounded soul behind the devil-in-his-eyes charisma, as he weaves self-help mantras through his articulate and candid answers.
Despite the flux in his private life over the years, Hardy’s range and gravitas demonstrated on both the stage and on British TV helped him slowly build back his reputation. Then in 2009, in terms of film, came the game changer, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson.
Hardy’s rabid and sensational performance of Britain’s most notorious prisoner Charles Bronson, suddenly presented the 33-year old actor as one of the freshest and most capable talents out there. Understandably, a long queue of directors formed to work with him.
He’ll be in John Hillcoat’s crime drama about American Depression era bootleggers in The Wettest County in the World and after his role in Inception last year, reteams with Christopher Nolan to play Batman villain Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Afterwards, comes perhaps Hardy’s greatest challenge, in fronting the reboot of Mad Max in Mad Max: Fury Road, which was originally slated to shoot late last year, now begins in 2012.
First up is Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior, in which Hardy plays Tommy Conlon. An ex-marine haunted by a tragic past, who returns to his home town of Pittsburgh after deserting from the army and enlists his father (Nick Nolte), a recovered alcholic and his former coach, to train him for a high stakes Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) tournament. His estranged brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former MMA fighter unable to make ends meet as a public school teacher, returns to the ring to provide for his family, entering the same tournament. While the years
may have passed, the bitter family recriminations still fester, putting the brothers on a collision course both in and out of the ring.
It sounds like straight-to-video fodder, but director O’Connor’s last film Pride and Glory suggests it could get interesting, which Hardy’s involvement certainly guarantees.
In preparing for the role, Hardy put on the muscle, leaned up by dropping 15 % of his body fat and mastered boxing, Muay Thai, kickboxing and Jiu-Jitsu.
If Christian Bale is currently the most de vigour name in terms of transforming actors, Hardy is not far behind. First he shrank to nothing to portray Stuart Shorter – a homeless man who suffered from muscular dystrophy and a desperate drug habit – in the TV adaption of the award winning book Stuart: A Life Backwards. He then gained 2 ½ stone in five weeks to play Charles Bronson. The man behind his rejuvenation is Hardy’s affable personal trainer and friend Pnut, a formidable black muscle-bound American ex-marine, who spent three years in a wheel chair, only to over come his woe to become Hardy’s right-hand man, sits in on Lodowns’ interview with Hardy in London.
Starting with Warrior. It must have been a challenge having Nick Nolte play your father? From personal experience, a 30-minute interview with him once, only contained one question. He went on a stream of consciousness that ended up at the Vietnam war!
TH: Oh yeah, he’s magic. Nick can talk. There’s a lot of things come out of a stream of consciousness, but knows what he’s talking about. He’s got ADD and all kinds of things like that, he’s a very busy-headed man. But I’m quite busy-headed in the same way, so I really appreciate his energy and approach. He’s very affable and he has a child-like behaviour to him as well, which is wonderful. He’s 70-years of age, so he’s been through a ton of stuff.
I’d imagine that this has been the optimum your body has been in a film?
TH: Yeah, I was a stone heavier than Bronson and had no fat as well. I was 12 ½ stone when I did Bronson. I probably had a stone of fat on, so this was the biggest I’ve ever been. I was just on chicken and broccoli. To maintain a structure like that, takes a lot of energy and working also takes a lot of energy as well, it tested me tremendously. I was definitely the weakest link on the film for suffering and sniffling. I sniffled a lot on that film.
What… through illness?
TH: No, just from moaning like a little bitch!
What’s the advantage of having a friend as your trainer when you enter a no-bullshit regime to prepare for a role like this?
TH: I’m not a machine and he knows my limits. If I say I can’t. I can’t. He’ll push me, but I don’t have to be a ‘warrior’, I just have to look like one. But we had to reach certain standards and inevitably there were broken bones. I cracked my ribs, I tore a ligament in my right hand, and so for life now, that’s fucked. And my little toe got broken, it snapped in the first two weeks and you’ll be surprised how a little toe is useful. Any punch or kick to the body that you see in the film, we’re actually hitting the bodies. Bodies are fine, you avoid the nose, eyes or the face, but anything can happen when you’re doing fight scenes 16 hours a day in six-day weeks, for six weeks. A lot of punches got through.
Do you feel it’s easy to focus on such regimes, as when you were younger you went off the rails, so your previous problems help you focus now?
TH: Well, it was a novelty to start off, and then I started taking it seriously about four years ago. The discipline was great , but then I got bored of the weight training, and it was like “Fuck, I’ve got to train.” So I’ll invent new ways to try and avoid it. [Laughs at Pnut.]
Pnut: I would show up at his house an he wouldn’t be there. I show up at his parents, he wouldn’t be there. I call his girl, he wouldn’t be there.
TH: Nobody answers the phone, so Pnut has to find me. He has to earn his money. He’s security as well, so if he can’t find me, there’s a problem!
He’s getting paid whatever happens…
TH: He’s getting paid a ludicrous amount of money and it will reflect heavily in his Christmans bonus, if I don’t look shit hot for Mad Max, but I don’t want to put the work in.
Pnut: The best technique is if you grab him by the feet and bang him into a tree, he eventually looks good…
TH: We have big Ren and Stimpy arguments and people look on and think Jesus! I’m screaming and shouting at Pnut, he’s shouting back. Then we cry and hold each other, and then get back to business again like real men!
Is Mad Max going to be full-on action?
TH: I think so, yeah. Now, we’re working on the Mad Max body, which is going to be stripped down and become more feral and dog-like.
Mel Gibson in those days wasn’t really beefed up.
TH: No, no, he wasn’t. He’s a legend man, but he didn’t do half the shit that we’re going to be doing in this one – you can fit the entire fucking trilogy in the first 20 minutes of this one. He’s a legend and I’ve got his shoes to fill and that’s going to be difficult enough, but the entire Mad Max trilogy is kind of over in the first 20 minutes. It’s epic, it’s ridiculous.
Why did George Miller want to do it?
TH: That’s a good question, which I’ll find out more about.
Because he’s gone to do all kinds of different things…
TH: Babe, Happy Feet… I love that about him.
I never met him, he looks like an old dandy.
TH: He’s very analytical; he’s a psychiatrist as well. He’s very analysis-based and caring and sensitive, and due dilligence is his process. He articulates himself in multitude of sensual and sensitive ways, and he’s just brilliant to be with.
You’re talking about all this action, but with George directing, it’s got to be a character piece too?
TH: He’s got to ground it entirely in a world of humility, sensitivity and vulnerability, that he exudes himself.
Is it obvious from what you’ve seen of the script already?
TH: No. [Laughing.] What you see in the script is just fucking raw carnage! So god knows how he’s going to do it. If it wasn’t for George Miller, I don’t think it’s something I would look at with any seriousness, because it would easily just be something that is an action movie, like any other, which either does well or doesn’t do well.
A lot of those films are essentially the same film, but with different outfits and names?
TH: It can be like that, but this isn’t the case. It’s more like the reinvention of Batman that Christopher Nolan did. This is George Miller, coming with something he created initially anyway and he’s had 30 years to ruminate on and to return back to it.
Pnut: It’s almost like an intimate independent film done on a epic scale. It’s terrifying.
There’s no Tina Turner…
TH: Thank god! I’m not going to lie, Mel was good but Tina wasn’t great, was she? She’s a legend that just didn’t translate to screen [laughing]. She’s still an incon and it’s more than I can say about my career. I’ve got the opportunity, but I’m no legend.
The first time we met was for Star Trek Nemesis, you were going through personal
difficulties at the time…
TH: Massively, I was high as a kite! [Breaks out laughing.] I wasn’t even on the fucking planet! That’s not put a finer point on it – I was on it, New Jack City style. Let’s make no bones about it, I was on rocket fuel. Man I was fucked. And I thought that film was going to make me a superstar. How wrong was I?
But at the same time…
TH: Still in it to win it, mate.
You managed to carry on doing theatre and getting plaudits at the same time. It wasn’t all about chasing highs; you were grounded in some respects in your work.
TH: Somebody up there must like me and I must be doing something right.
For example, doing the play recently with Philip Seymour Hoffman (who directed Hardy in The Long Red Road by Brett C Leonard) he won’t just work with anybody.
TH: No, you’re right and I’m very grateful for that. I spent 10 weeks with him in Chicago hanging on his every word and working with to a place where he’s my friend as well. I do love what I do. I’m lucky enough to have a skill set and certain amount of talent, to be able to do and move with certain people to do certain work, and that’s a sort of secured level of self-esteem, desire, ambition and need to fulfill certain criteria.
I must admit at the time of Nemesis it was apparent you had the good to bring to the table, but what was your state of mind to your work? Did you have an inner confidence? Did you compare yourself to other British actors to gain confidence?
TH: That’s interesting. That’s low self-esteem manifesting itself as looking at others and saying I can do better than this cant here, which manifests itself as false pride and ambition in the wrong place. I was off-centre. When I pointed the finger of blame at people, there were three pointing back. Naturally, growing older and wiser with experience, it’s no longer “I want to be the best”, which was quite immature and an arrogant defect, but now I just want to be the best that I can be. I want to be part of a team. I’ve had a limited amount of experience where I’ve had a certain amount of success and interest from people whom I deem to be very fucking good at what they do. They’ve validated my prescence by saying come in, Tom, we want to work with you.
You haven’t been shy in playing characters that in many ways reflect the way you were – Sammy in the Philip Seymour Hoffman play and the character of Stuart.
TH: We know Stuart and Sammy. Stuart is not far from where I’ve come from. I’m not Stuart, but I identify hugely. The message is in the fact that I find these people’s struggles, epic struggles, on a molecular basis and a very individual basis – they may not be the President of
the United States of America – this is a guy struggling in Cambridge to fucking live. That is intrinsically important and vital for me to be a part of, the message of care, love and understanding, and to give a voice to that make up, that individual, because I get it. Other actors have desires to be other characters, but I search out these because I find them more fascinating because I identify with with. It’s cathartic as well. It’s also partly coming to the project with some kind of experience of sort and then manifesting it into the acting. I’m an artist as well. It might sound wank, but I do see myself as an artist. I don’t say it a lot, but at the end of the day, I am.
Well, it’s proper “acting”, so to speak.
TH: Absolutely. The meat and potatoes of good film are with those individuals and teams like say the Coen brothers, who manifest great pieces of work and ultimately art, who observe and reflect society on a level which is incredibly apt and specific. [Laughing.]
You’ll be appearing in Christopher Nolans’s next Batman film as Bane, how did you originally crop up on his radar? Did he see you in Bronson?
TH: Flew out to him, had a chat, he gave me the job.
A bit like how Woody Allen casts…
TH: It never happens like that. It was brilliant.
How did you get the Mad Max role? Was that because of Bronson?
TH: Flew out, had a chat, [laughing] got a job! I happened twice in the same week. [Laughter] Actually, it happened three times, I also did it with Tony Scott as well, with Potsdamer Platz, which is another thing. A cracking week that! There’s no rhyme or reason; I’ve been struggling for ten years to be taken seriously, then suddenly it’s “Wanna have a chat?” Yeah. “Here’s a job!” What?! How dare you! I don’t want it!
What do you put it down to?
TH: Fuck knows.
Instant charisma?
TH: Instant gratification! It felt good. Fuck knows, man. One thought is I have no idea how any of this works. I have no control over anything that’s going on. It ain’t that different from how I approach my work anyway. It’s a question of God’s time. With Mad Max, it’s interesting timing. I’ve met a woman I want to marry and settle down with, and I have my beautiful son I want to live with. I want to be at home and I need to be at home, but instead, it’s off you go on the biggest adventure you’ve ever done – knowing full well how these thing can bomb. It’s hard – you’ve got to go up against Mel Gibson and it’s impossible.
And you’re miles away in Australia…
TH: Yes, apart from that, it’s far away in Australia, and bearing in mind I have a problem with isolation, abandonment, and I’ve been an addict. Seven years in being clean, now’s the time to take you right away from your comfort zone again and we promise this will do good things for you … or it won’t. [Laughing] We’ll see what happens.
You see it as your biggest challenge?
TH: It’s the biggest role. I think something like Stuart or Broson were both massively complicated roles, this is massively complicated, but it’s the star vehicle as well. It’s make or break – can you recreate a second time round what Mad Max did? I don’t know if I can. In that way it’s a challenge.
You have to disassociate yourself from that side of the expectation, because it’s not real…
TH: Yeah. What would you do with it? That’s where I’m at, It’s not that I don’t have a skill set, it’s a question of what are the right tools? So I get out the basics and approach it like anything… How do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time. It’s like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro for filmmaking for me. Make plans, god will laugh, this is what will happen.
Then you’ve got to climb down…
TH: Yeah. Take care of the input and the output with take care of itself. If the heaves fall, as is their nature to do so, remember there’s a certain amount of gravity and reality with just having a family. At the end of the day, all roads lead back home.
You can only do your best?
TH: It won’t be because we didn’t fucking try. I’ll bang out anybody, if they fucking tell me my Mad Max isn’t me working my hardest. I’m going to put myself on the line; it’s not the first time. I’ve got fire. I’m also a little bit smarter now, so I know I’m going to fail. So I’m pissed already going out there [to Australia], never mind Mad Max, I’m “Pissed and Angry Max”!
What’s the first step in preparing to do Mad Max?
TH: When I’ve got to stop smoking and start skipping, then I’m going to be really angry. Then’s he going to want to shoot all the lovely stuff. I’ll be like “Where’s that dog that needs fucking?” No, I need you to come over here and sniff flowers
Well, all I can say is good luck
TH: Thank you very much, because I WILL fucking need it.
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