Finding an actor with an absolutely unique balance of opposite qualities to play Tommy Conlon, a character who does some unlikeable things and who is often unpleasant but whose core goodness and vulnerability must be ever apparent to the audience, was the key to the film first and foremost.  O’Connor had read close to 200 actors for the part when after an initial phone conversation, he arranged for an in-person meeting with Tom Hardy.  “It wasn’t a traditional audition” explains Hardy, who was confident in the dramatic essence of the character but had fierce initial doubts about whether he could “close the gap” presented by the accent transformation, physical transformation, and cultural transformations the role required.  After sharing his concerns with O’Connor, the two settled on a pow-wow in theUnited Statesto do some reading, development and analysis, and hopefully arm Hardy with a fully rounded character.  That experience turned out to be more in-depth than O’Connor ever imagined.  He recounts, “(Hardy) showed up at my house at midnight on a Sunday, unannounced.  Just a knock on the door, and there’s Tom Hardy.  He was supposed to go to a hotel, but instead stayed at my house for five days.  He never left, so I got to know him very well.  And the qualities that he had as a human being were just right for the character.”

Hardy’s co-star Edgerton feels strongly that the people with the most interesting lives off-screen make the most interesting presences on screen, and thinks that Hardy’s performance falls squarely into that category.  He feels that the key to playing this combustible character was that “Tom is definitely a character in real life, a really loving, lovely, thoughtful, intelligent guy. He’s a complex guy and that shows through in his work.”

While both lead actors were put on a grueling ten-week, full-time training regimen and a strict high protein diet of six small meals per day, Hardy’s regimen focused much more on heavy weight lifting with the goal of bulking up, ultimately to the tune of twenty-eight additional pounds of muscle put on for the part.  Unlike Edgerton, Hardy didn’t have previous athletic experience.  The son of aCambridgeacademic father, Hardy is the first to admit that prior to WARRIOR, he was not a fighting man, and not intimately familiar with “alpha male territory.”  While the structure of his training days, which consisted of two hours of boxing, followed by two hours of kickboxing and Muay Thai, followed by two hours of choreography, and finally two hours of lifting, won’t be missed by Hardy (who JJ Perry [stunt coordinator and fight choreographer] lovingly described during training as “carb-depleted, angry and moody”), the sense of accomplishment and athletic prowess gained as a result of appearing in the film will be forever treasured.