Tom Hardy: No More Drama

Ask Tom Hardy about his tat­toos and he’ll lift up his shirt to reveal them. Our impromp­tu show and tell ses­sion has bare­ly begun before LWLies is star­ing at Hardy’s naked tor­so and the tapes­try of motifs that cov­er his chest, shoul­ders and upper arms. ​“Every one reminds me of some­thing in my life; an event, a per­son, a place,” he explains.

Almost the entire­ty of Hardy’s top half is adorned with a con­stel­la­tion of keep­sakes and mem­o­ries he’s been steadi­ly accu­mu­lat­ing since he was 15. There’s a Union Jack embla­zoned above his heart (“To remind me where I come from”), and across his col­lar­bone the words ​‘padre fiero’ (‘proud father’). Else­where, Hardy’s fiancé, ex-wife and the moth­er of his son each have their own spe­cial trib­ute. But it’s the enflamed pink flesh sur­round­ing his fresh­est ink that catch­es the eye. ​“I got this a cou­ple of days ago,” he reveals, fram­ing a pinch of skin above his right bicep between thumb and fore­fin­ger. ​‘II O&R’. ​“To observe and reflect,” trans­lates Hardy. ​“My act­ing creed.”

It’s not uncom­mon to be greet­ed in a per­son­able man­ner by a high-pro­file star, but Hardy’s readi­ness to expose him­self so ear­ly in our meet­ing comes as a sur­prise. This cor­dial, unguard­ed dis­po­si­tion is entire­ly at odds with the tough guy per­sona he exudes to such for­mi­da­ble effect on screen. No soon­er has the ice bro­ken, how­ev­er, than the mood turns sour. Hardy picks up a copy of LWLies 41 posi­tioned on the foot­stool in front of him, leaf­ing through before paus­ing on a spread. It’s the ​‘Time to Die’ visu­al fea­ture com­pris­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er David Houncheringer’s dark­ly com­pelling ​‘Do You Want to Die Today?’ collection.

He scans each image with fur­rowed intent; tuck­ing the unruly rus­set beard he’s been grow­ing for the past three months into his chest while keep­ing his eyes locked on the page. In a bid to snap Hardy out of his trance, LWLies offers some con­text, explain­ing that the pho­tographs rep­re­sent each subject’s cho­sen fan­ta­sy death sce­nario – that it’s just art. Silence. Then the seem­ing­ly innocu­ous but near fatal ques­tion slips out: what would your scene be?

In one swift motion Hardy drops the mag and spins a full 90 degrees. We’re now inch­es apart. Nose-to-nose. As if the elon­gat­ed S‑shaped sofa we’re shar­ing has coiled vio­lent­ly, forc­ing us to invade each other’s per­son­al space. ​“I real­ly don’t appre­ci­ate you ask­ing me a ques­tion like that,” Hardy growls. His fierce, pen­e­trat­ing eyes are fixed in an unblink­ing stare. ​“Have you ever had a near-death expe­ri­ence?” he asks.

“I’m speak­ing from expe­ri­en­tial hind­sight and I can tell you it’s not some­thing to be tak­en light­ly. If you want to talk to me about death you’ve got to come from that place. It’s like ask­ing some­one, ​‘How many peo­ple have you killed?’ You under­stand what I’m saying?”

Sens­ing Hardy is on the verge of cut­ting the inter­view short (or some­thing worse) LWLies extends an olive branch, mak­ing it absolute­ly clear we’re not here to unset­tle or antag­o­nise him. He sits back, takes a moment to col­lect him­self and ges­tures for a change of sub­ject. But almost imme­di­ate­ly Hardy jolts for­ward again. ​“I’m sor­ry, man… You’ve just touched on a spot that’s very sen­si­tive. You have no idea how close to some­thing I am right now in my per­son­al life. No fuck­ing idea. It’s not your fault, I under­stand that, but you’ve real­ly struck a nerve.

“I don’t want you to get the wrong impres­sion of me,” he con­tin­ues, ​“I don’t want you think­ing I’m a dick. Gen­uine­ly, that ques­tion, what it evokes, is very close to home right now. Those pho­tos just real­ly freaked the shit out of me. At the moment I’m very close to some shit that you’re touch­ing on that’s very, very seri­ous. You’ve pushed a mas­sive but­ton in me and I’m just not real­ly in a place to talk about what’s going on right now. I wish I could get into it with you, but this ain’t the time or the place. Death is a very seri­ous real­i­ty to me.”

Irre­spec­tive of what­ev­er recent per­son­al trau­ma has made mor­tal­i­ty such a sen­si­tive issue, his heat­ed reac­tion reveals some­thing of the non-defeatist atti­tude that has come to define Hardy’s tur­bu­lent 12-year pur­suit of star­dom. Today, he’s one of British cinema’s most in-demand exports, hav­ing estab­lished him­self as a brazen scene-steal­er in Incep­tion and Tin­ker Tai­lor Sol­dier Spy, and more recent­ly land­ing meaty roles in Law­less, The Dark Knight Ris­es and next year’s Mad Max reboot.

Ten years ago the pic­ture looked a lot dif­fer­ent. ​“I had a first shot at Hol­ly­wood and it went to my head,” recalls Hardy. ​“I start­ed doing things I shouldn’t have been doing, mix­ing with peo­ple I shouldn’t have been mix­ing with. I was a fuck­ing mess. The fame got to me, I guess.”

Hardy’s bat­tle with the demons of his ear­ly celebri­ty came to a head in 2003, when he vol­un­tar­i­ly entered a rehab clin­ic for alco­holism and crack addic­tion. After get­ting clean he found work with a small the­atre com­pa­ny, took up writ­ing and slow­ly made his way back onto the screen through a string of TV dra­mas. As far as the film indus­try was con­cerned, how­ev­er, Hardy was taint­ed. No stu­dio was will­ing to touch him. The scripts dried up. Then Hardy’s friend, Kel­ly Mar­cel, approached him with a rough draft of a screen­play writ­ten with him in mind for the lead role. They took it to a UK dis­trib­u­tor who re-wrote it, fired Hardy and brought in Jason Statham. The Stath had it rewrit­ten again then walked away, before it even­tu­al­ly fell into the lap of Nico­las Wind­ing Refn.

Sud­den­ly, Hardy was back in con­tention, but he still had to con­vince Refn he was the right man – the only man – for the job. ​“Nic didn’t take much of a shine to me at first,” Hardy admits. ​“I fought damn hard to make Bron­son hap­pen. I think the thing that swung it for me in the end was the fact I was doing it for me. It got to the point where I just thought, ​‘If I nev­er get anoth­er shot at Hol­ly­wood, fine.’ I wasn’t doing it for the fame any­more; I was doing it for the love of acting.”

The sweet irony is that Bron­son became Hardy’s call­ing card after it went down a storm State­side. From look­ing des­tined to be remem­bered as just anoth­er hot young burnout, sud­den­ly Hol­ly­wood was abuzz with talk of a ​‘British Bran­do’. ​“Peo­ple real­ly took notice. Doors that weren’t open before were begin­ning to peek open,” he reflects. ​“Things total­ly changed for me after that because I let go of so much; of swim­ming against the tide, of the fear of fac­ing hur­dles and wor­ry­ing about fail­ure.” Through sheer grit and stub­born­ness Hardy had risen to his feet and, with noth­ing to lose, he set his sights on break­ing America.

The fol­low­ing sum­mer he signed on to War­rior, but after months of prep work the stu­dio decid­ed he wasn’t going to make the grade. He was deemed uncred­i­ble, not bank­able enough. Even the MMA experts who trained him said he’d nev­er make the weight to be a con­vinc­ing fight­er. Hardy wouldn’t have it. He went away, hit the gym and packed on 13kg of sol­id mus­cle (a physique he would regain in order to por­tray Bane in The Dark Knight Ris­es). Recog­nis­ing Hardy’s met­tle, the stu­dio changed its mind. ​“Doing War­rior was the biggest change in terms of my career because it was my first Amer­i­can movie,” he explains. ​“It was a huge trans­for­ma­tion, not just a phys­i­cal one but a cul­tur­al one.”

The huge emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal strain Hardy has endured over the course of his career, cou­pled with the slim mar­gin of actors that make it to the top of the pile, makes his cur­rent ascen­dance all the more improb­a­ble. In truth, his entire jour­ney has been against the odds. Hardy stud­ied at two pri­vate schools but strug­gled aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, a fail­ing he attrib­ut­es to his short atten­tion span and lack of guid­ance. He was an over­ac­tive child with an addic­tive per­son­al­i­ty. By the time he left school he was unem­ploy­able, reck­less and grow­ing up fast.

Hardy hit 20 before he was final­ly encour­aged to con­struc­tive­ly chan­nel his self-pro­fessed nar­cis­sism. But while the plea­sure he took from per­form­ing in front of an audi­ence val­i­dat­ed his move into act­ing, once more it was the doubters that stoked the fire. ​“I’m an addict,” con­fess­es Hardy, ​“which means if you tell me I can’t do some­thing I’ll do it. If I tell myself I want to do some­thing, how­ev­er hard or gru­elling it might be, I’ll do it. Even if it ter­ri­fies me. You’ve got to be an absolute fuck­ing nut­case to pur­sue a career in act­ing,” he con­tin­ues. ​“Either that or you need to real­ly believe in what you’re doing. Every­one who said I’d nev­er make it gave me that self-belief.”

Giv­en what it’s tak­en for Hardy to get to this point, it’s no won­der he doesn’t take mat­ters of an exis­ten­tial nature light­ly. The night before our con­ver­sa­tion, Hardy joined his fel­low Law­less cast mem­bers along­side direc­tor John Hill­coat at the film’s world pre­mière in Cannes. ​“Sur­re­al and unfa­mil­iar,” is how Hardy describes the expe­ri­ence of being escort­ed by motor­cade to the red car­pet. On arrival he was greet­ed by bay­ing crowds of paparazzi and ador­ing fans. ​“I felt like a movie star,” he beams, ​“like how I’d always imag­ined movie stars feel.”

You get the impres­sion, though, that none of it – nei­ther the adu­la­tion, the fame nor the wealth – would mean a thing to Hardy if he weren’t able to share it with the peo­ple who have pushed him all the way. ​“See­ing myself up there on the screen and hav­ing my fiancé and par­ents by my side, I sensed this release in them, like their faith in me had been reward­ed. For the first time I felt that release, too. I was able to see where I was and I realised, ​‘Fuck, it’s tak­en 12 years to get here.’ It’s tak­en this long to arrive; I’m not going to let go now. I don’t want to die today.”