The Brit stars in ‘The Bikeriders,’ which seems destined to burnish both his reputation as a character actor and off-screen fame
‘I’m old! Why didn’t they give me these roles before I turned 40?’: Tom Hardy, Hollywood’s late bloomer The Brit stars in ‘The Bikeriders,’ which seems destined to burnish both his reputation as a character actor and off-screen fame
“No one cared who I was until I put on the mask.” The phrase was uttered by Bane, the character Tom Hardy (Hammersmith, England, 46) plays in The Dark Knight, but it could just as easily describe the actor himself. In at least three movies, Hardy’s face has been partially hidden: Mad Max: Fury Road, Dunkirk and the aforementioned third installment of the Batman trilogy, his long-running Hollywood gig. Sometimes, Hardy’s masks have been of his own making, crafted via extreme transformations that have put his health in danger. He’s hardly risk-averse: he played two brothers in Legend and was the only character in the well-received Locke.
The man is not one to shy from a contradiction: he jealously guards his private life, but still speaks openly about the addictions with which he’s lived for 13 years and his exuberant love for his children: “When I found out I was going to be a father, it cut out so much shit from my head.” A symbol of normative virility, one who says he feels “as masculine as an eggplant,” an actor who shuns Hollywood stardom, yet whose box-office hits earn millions. While we wait for the final chapter of his unexpectedly successful Venom trilogy, Hardy has released The Bikeriders, described by Variety as “The Godfather of biker movies,” in which he shares billing with Austin Butler and Jodie Comer.
He is aware that his fans adore his excesses. “People didn’t sit up and take any notice of me until I started putting on weight and kicking people and being aggressive,” he told Esquire. Conflict has been a constant in his story. He’s the son of novelist and screenwriter Edward “Chips” Hardy — co-creator of Taboo, the brutal HBO series on which Tom has both co-writing and leading man credits — and of the painter Elizabeth Anne Barret. The actor had a comfortable childhood. “I always felt a certain sense of shame over being privileged,” he says. At 11 years old, his ears perked up during a presentation delivered by a police officer to his class that warned of the dangers of sniffing glue. He hadn’t realized that it was so easy to find drugs. Not that he wants to glamorize addiction. He wasn’t a bad man, he says, just a bad drunk.