Exclusive interview with man in demand, Tom Hardy

By Fiona Keating on September 26th 2011

He’s so good looking that women and men swoon when he walks past, and many film critics liken him to a young Marlon Brando or Robert De Niro. I met up with Tom Hardy at a swanky Soho hotel to talk about his role in Warrior, which is on general release, playing an ex-marine who enters mixed martial arts competitions for a living.

In fact, Hardy is looking very butch and buff, with lips that look like they’ve had a sizeable amount of collagen added or he’s been smacked in the mouth by a Maori rugby player.

One of the first things I notice about Hardy is the size of his neck, which seems to have thickened in size since his earlier roles as an East End gangster. I didn’t notice before until Hardy pointed him out, but sitting quietly in the corner of the hotel room is  Pnut his personal trainer, who is about the size and shape of a fridge freezer. Pnut, is responsible for Hardy’s remarkable physical form in Warrior, and the actor should be awarded an Oscar just for keeping to the training routine.

It’s a regimen that involved Pnut doing press-ups on Hardy’s head to develop his neck muscles. I’m not sure whether this was before or after the gym sessions which started at 7am. After peanut butter on toast and protein shakes Hardy would start by skipping, then boxing for two hours, followed by choreography for the fight scenes, and hours of Jiu Jitsu, and Muay Thai. Then they would do an evening gym session with weights to build up muscle.

In Warrior, Hardy plays the son of a recovering alcoholic who trains him for a mixed martial arts contest. The actor says he found the role very cathartic, drawing from his own personal experience. Expelled from school for stealing, and arrested for gun possession, he also battled addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine before ending up in rehab. It’s an education from the school of hard knocks that RADA can’t come near to.

In person, Hardy is relaxed, practically semi-reclining on the sofa. He’s softly spoken with an upper-class accent, belying his public-school roots. I ask him about the pain threshold he went through to get in shape for the film. “It was really tough and I tore ligaments in my hand, but it was fun,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong. I whinged and moaned and bitched and cried and howled my way through it. But there’s something gritty about getting punched in the face.”

His method acting took root from his days at the Drama Centre in Clerkenwell (now relocated to Kings Cross). Hardy puts everything into his acting and has transformed himself from a rather geeky 20-something into a lean, mean fighting machine. “It’s not about the size of the dog in the fight – it’s about the fight in the dog,” he explains. “I’ve got a friend who is a very high level operator for the Pentagon who comes from a public school background. But you would never know that if you met him – and he is one of the toughest men I have met in my life.”

Having a massive ego helps an actor cope with all the rejection they face. Hardy tells me how this and the adulation of his fans supported him through the gruelling filming on location. “We shot 210 hours of fight footage in six weeks in front of thousands of people. My character’s name is Tommy and my name is Tom so when I came out and heard the crowd shouting ‘Tommy!’ I thought ‘I can do this.’”

Although Hardy has played a whole range of characters from Elizabethan fops in The Virgin Queen to homeless down and outs as in Stuart: A Life Backwards, it’s as violent baddies that the actor made a name for himself. He portrayed the mother of all psychos as the title character in Bronson. This 2009 film followed the life of one of the country’s most dangerous criminals, who spent most of his life in solitary confinement. Again, Hardy beefed up for this role, putting on 42lbs in true method acting style, and won critical acclaim for his portrayal, which won him the British Independent Film Award for best actor.

The 33-year old is much in demand. Hardy will be in the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, due for release in 2012, playing the chemically enhanced muscleman Bane. He will also play another villainous character when he takes the title role in Mad Max: Fury Road which also comes out next year. If there’s a remake of The Saint, perhaps Hardy should put himself forward just for a rest from the gym.

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