Tom Hardy (4 page)

Ridley Scott is a director who always has a clear idea of
what he wants to achieve when he’s shooting and, according to one of
Black Hawk Down
’s stars, Ewan McGregor, he shoots as he wants to edit the film. He wanted the combat and the reactions of the soldiers in the film to look as realistic as possible. This was partly achieved by the actors not being aware of when or where exactly there would be explosions and gunfire while filming was taking place. Therefore many of the reactions you see on screen are ones of genuine shock and surprise. And even with the explosions and gunfire and other background noise, they were all expected just to get on with delivering their lines and filming the scenes. ‘It’s massive,’ commented Tom during the filming of the movie, ‘a huge barrage of orchestrated violence.’

During the film, Tom’s character, Lance Twombly, and his friend, Nelson, played by Ewen Bremner, become separated from the troops they are with when some of the Rangers leave their position in order to secure the helicopter crash site. For quite some time the two characters are left on their own and the light-hearted dialogue between them provides some relief from the incessant gunfire and explosions occurring throughout other scenes in the film. At one point, Twombly accidentally deafens Nelson when he fires his rifle too close to his head.

The realism of the combat in
Black Hawk Down
was something critics picked up on when the film hit cinemas at the start of 2002. While they noted the film avoided venturing into the territory of political comment or international relations, they acknowledged that, technically, Scott had achieved something remarkable. In fact, the grit and relentlessness of the combat was compared to the realism of some of the fighting recreated in
Band of Brothers
. Philip French of the
Observer
went so far as to say that
Black Hawk Down
was ‘one of the most convincing, realistic combat movies I’ve ever seen, a film presenting a confused event with clarity and involving us as if we were there in the thick of the fray.’

Tom shared his director’s desire for realism and embraced the reality of his role wholeheartedly. In one scene, just as Twombly is reunited with his fellow rangers and is running across open space to rejoin them, he is fired upon by the enemy and catches fire. Ordinarily, this action sequence would have been undertaken by a stunt man but Hardy was desperate to do it himself and, in the end, Ridley Scott agreed. Since his teens, Tom had thrived on risk-taking behaviour, from alcohol to drug-taking to criminal activities, and now that he was acting for a living, he still seemed to crave the thrill of living dangerously. ‘I begged them to blow me up and they blew me up and I feel great – I feel born again. I want more, though, I want it to be bigger,’ he commented while working on the film. Speaking to the
Observer
in 2007, he was philosophical about his motivation for carrying out this dangerous stunt himself – ‘…it’s about feeling alive – and maybe that’s only possible in the presence of death.’

Some years prior to landing his first acting jobs, Tom had expressed to his mother a desire to go and join the French Foreign Legion. She persuaded him not to enlist, on the basis that he wouldn’t last five minutes. In 2001, Tom found himself cast once again as a soldier in an adaptation based on true events – and, ironically, he was to play a Legionnaire.

The filming of
Black Hawk Down
had taken place on location in Morocco and Tom found himself back there
enduring the scorching heat of the desert for this next role in
Simon: An English Legionnaire
(also called
Deserter
). While the film gave the young actor a much bigger role and the opportunity to flex his acting muscles a bit more, as a production it garnered much less attention than either
Band of Brothers
or
Black Hawk Down
.

The film is based on the memoirs of Simon Murray’s time spent in the French Foreign Legion in Algeria at the time of the Algerian War of Independence (1954 to 1962). Murray enlists in the Foreign Legion after being rejected by his girlfriend, Jennifer and arrives in Algeria to find that life as a Legionnaire is far more brutal than he had imagined. Nevertheless, he befriends some of his fellow soldiers, including the Frenchman Pascal Dupont, played by Tom (this time losing the American accent and gaining a Gallic one).

Although the opening of the film did not attract vast swathes of media attention, by contrast, the nature of the film’s inception did. It was reported that Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, had read the book and passed it on to her friend, director Martin Huberty, urging him to bring it to the big screen. At the time of the film’s release, she commented: ‘I recommended the book to Martin, and am delighted to have played a small part in the film’s coming to life.’

Though beautifully filmed and effectively recounted, the film proved to be a tough sell and although Tom’s role was a supporting one, his reviews were more positive than those for Paul Fox who had taken the title role of Simon. ‘As played by Fox, Simon is disconcertingly passive, especially when compared with the angry and more driven Dupont,’ was the comment offered by
Variety
.

While Tom was dramatising the events that had changed the path of Algeria’s history, the international landscape as it was in 2001 was about to change beyond recognition. The 11 September terrorist attacks sent shockwaves around the globe as people struggled to comprehend what had taken place in the USA and how it would affect the world in months and years to come. Events of these proportions remain seared on the consciousness for a very long time and most people can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they learned of news of this magnitude, and Tom was no exception, particularly given his location at the time.

‘We’d just done
Black Hawk Down
and they shelved that immediately,’ he recalled when speaking to
The Wrap
. ‘There were a lot of war films that year being made. A lot of work was being done in North Africa. Everyone had started panicking. And I was executing holy men in a scene three days later in a mosque in Morocco. It was a thing called
Simon, French Foreign Legion Deserter
. So it was a very odd situation to be in because there I was playing a soldier in North Africa. We had a plane on standby to get us out if anything kicked off.’

Tom went on to reflect on the effect the attacks had on him on a more personal level, too. ‘Immediately, it was a
life-changing
event. I have friends who serve, I have a lot of friends in special forces, I have very, very close friends who deal in very serious operations all over the Middle East that were affected post-9/11. I’m still really thrown by the loss and the amount of people on that day, and that whole situation, to be honest. I’m a bit thrown. I’ve got friends who were in the building, in the twin towers. I have friends who are servicemen, what can you say?’

Years later, in 2007, Tom found himself coming a bit too close to a genuine soldier’s life for comfort. He had auditioned unsuccessfully for an American series called
Generation Kill
– the part he wanted was that of a Marine during the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. By this time, Tom had a bulkier and more toned physique and was training regularly. Plus, he was being recognised for his tough guy characters, so it would be fair to assume that he would be a dead cert for the role. Sadly, it was not to be, but something about the rejection made Tom determined to prove to himself that he was made of the right stuff to be a solider. In a decidedly impulsive move, he took himself off to an induction with the Parachute Regiment in the Territorial Army. Fortunately for all concerned, when Tom realised the scale of the commitment – and that he may well be sent into active combat – both he and the military recruiters realised it was not really an option for him. ‘I started to ask questions, so they soon got me out. That finished all that macho bollocks for me. But I sucked up the environment, I absorbed a few more characters,’ he explained to the
Observer
.

Tom’s part in
Simon, An English Legionnaire
had rather gone under the radar, along with the film itself. Just around the corner, though, lay a part that would draw more attention to him than he could possibly have imagined. He was about to embark on a starring role in one of the biggest television and movie franchises in the world. How would the up-
and-coming
actor cope with the scrutiny of die-hard fans? And how would he cope with the responsibility of a major Hollywood role?

F
or any actor, taking on a role in a long-established franchise is an endeavour that brings both pleasure and pain. On the one hand, it is a sure-fire way of raising the profile and is usually a lucrative pursuit. Johnny Depp, star of the blockbusting
Pirates of the Caribbean
franchise, has stated that he is paid ‘stupid money’ for making the movies and chooses to justify the pay cheque on the grounds that he is earning the money for his children’s futures. On the other hand, fans of established franchises tend to have strident opinions on the direction of the series and are notoriously choosy about which actors are cast in certain roles. Daniel Craig is a prime example of a fine character actor who found himself thrown into the limelight in 2005 when it was announced he was to be the new James Bond. Before he’d even had a chance to prove himself, Bond aficionados made no secret of their doubts over the choice of Craig as the next 007. As it happened, Craig was arguably one of the best
Bonds ever and rapidly hushed the naysayers with his rebooted spy. It takes a resilient actor to handle such pressure and an intelligent one to silence the critics.

Coming into a franchise as long-standing and with such a fanatical following as
Star Trek
was never going to be easy, and any actor doing so would be sure to elicit a vociferous response from Trekkies. The original television series aired back in 1966 and, since then, the format has been reinvented for new generations of fans. After the original series, the show was recast as
Star Trek: The Next Generation
, which ran from 1987 to 1994.

The 2002 film,
Star Trek: Nemesis
, was the 10th film in the
Star Trek
franchise and the fourth (and final) one to feature the characters from the television series of
Next Generation
. The plot of
Nemesis
unfolds as the Starship Enterprise undertakes a journey to a planet called Romulus, the Star Fleet crew believing that the Romulans want to broker peace and negotiate a truce. As they head towards the Romulan Empire, they discover a villainous clone of the Enterprise’s captain, Jean-Luc Picard (played by Patrick Stewart) who is planning an attack on Earth. The clone, Shinzon (played by Tom), is the result of an experiment conducted by the Romulans in an attempt to take Picard’s place on the Enterprise and use the clone as a spy – but after a change in Romulan government, the clone plan is shelved and Shinzon is sent to Remus as a slave. Having been cast aside on Remus, Shinzon plots his power grab. According to Patrick Stewart, the original intention was not for there to be a clone but for Picard to find a long-lost son, but the actor, amongst others, felt that this might make for too sentimental a storyline.

The story raises interesting issues, such as how far a person’s character is formed from their genetic blueprint and to what degree they are influenced by their environment. Shinzon is theoretically the same as Picard but has grown up surrounded by beings from different races – and has been treated badly by them.

From the outset, director Stuart Baird and producer Rick Berman had clear ideas about the kind of actor they were looking for to play Shinzon. For a start, the character is a clone of Picard (albeit 25 years younger), so the right candidate had to bear some resemblance to him. He also needed to be an actor with the ability to tap into the darker side of human nature in order to portray a complex and tortured villain. Additionally, the actor in question had to be assured enough to star opposite not only one of the most respected actors of his generation but also the man who had so successfully inhabited the skin of Captain Picard for 16 years.

The search for Shinzon was a lengthy one, with the part at one point apparently being intended for Jude Law. Baird ultimately decided, though, that he wanted an unknown actor for the part. Also paramount was to find someone with sex appeal and who would attract younger fans to the film. Casting directors scoured the UK for their man and six actors were screen tested for the role before they eventually alighted upon Tom, who turned out to have just the right ingredients for the part. ‘He had an edge … a street feel,’ said Baird.

The audition process, though, was anything but easy. At the time of casting, Tom was still out in Morocco filming
Simon, An English Legionnaire
. It transpired that his agent had been contacted by Patrick Stewart who wanted to find out if she
knew of any actors who would be a reasonable fit for the part of Picard’s evil clone. She knew just the young man and, naturally, Tom jumped at the chance to take on a major Hollywood role. Particular pages from the script were sent out to him in Morocco but, true to his non-conformist style, he managed to get hold of the script in its entirety and elected to use other parts of it for the audition tape he was making. Even more unconventionally, he chose to deliver some of the dialogue to camera in the nude. The maverick nature of his tape appealed to Stuart Baird and also to Patrick Stewart, who commented: ‘I was riveted by it and Rick [Berman] was too… I said, “There’s something very odd about this fellow, but I think we should see him.”’ Having made quite an impression, Tom got the call to go to LA for a screen test.

Poised for what could be his big break into Hollywood, Tom was understandably nervous and, on his arrival in LA, was unexpectedly given the full Tinseltown star treatment. The night before the screen test, he was whisked from the airport to a sumptuous hotel in a chauffeur-driven limousine. Unable to believe his luck, he got out his video camera and excitedly filmed his luxurious room as a memento to show his wife, Sarah, and family back at home. ‘And then, suddenly, I realised it was a school day next day. I had serious work to do. Prepare. Panic, panic. So I filmed myself doing my serious work – which is something I do – going through the script again. It was just in case… Whatever happened in this screen test, I’ve got this on tape, doing my stuff in a relaxed environment – how I want to play this character,’ he explained to
SFX
magazine.

Unfortunately for Tom, the following day, his nerves got the
better of him and the screen test turned out to be little short of disastrous. ‘I was supposed to be this incredible villain and instead I’m a quivering nervous wreck, waiting to be exposed and sent back to Britain. Then Patrick Stewart comes in dressed as Picard in his Star Fleet uniform and we did the scene and it was terrible, I mean awful, I was appalling,’ he told the
Sun
in 2002.

Despite the disappointing performance, Tom was determined not to lose out on the part and insisted that Baird take a look at the character and script work he had recorded on his camera the previous night. His preference would have been for the director to have seen only his acting, not the part of the tape in which he had been showing off his Hollywood hotel and, as he put it, ‘messing around in my boxers.’ Unfortunately, there were no videotape editors on hand at the studio to extract the relevant part of the tape, so Tom was obliged to hand it over in its entirety, scantily-clad antics and all. One can only imagine the dreadful sinking feeling he must have experienced as the handed over the tape. Having resigned himself to having blown his big chance, he was pleasantly surprised when he was offered the part a few days later.

Winning the part was just the first step of a challenging process. Tom has admitted that, while he was aware of
Star Trek
, he had never been a Trekkie, so had to immerse himself in the programme’s history and characters. He was also acutely aware of the pressure that came with a major role in a big-budget franchise film: ‘To be 23 or 24 and have that kind of money on my shoulders… I thought, if you f**k this up, Hardy… to be aware you’re holding that kind of weight
– it was a huge deal for me,’ he explained to the
Sunday Times
in 2006.

When it came to taking Shinzon from script to screen, it was clear that he would not succeed as a character in his own right if he was played as simply an impression of Picard. While Tom did pay attention to certain physical aspects of the Picard character, when it came to the essence of Shinzon, he brought his own interpretation to the nature of his villainy. In an interview with
IGN Movies
, Tom explained how he set about differentiating Shinzon from Picard so that he might give him some depth: ‘In order to make this gentleman
three-dimensional
as opposed to one-dimensional, I had to find a human issue on him. And that means I don’t have to copy or mimic anything that Patrick does at all. Which is very free, because then all the sudden [sic] you have a foundation to develop a character.’

Later in his career, Tom would garner huge acclaim for his powerhouse performances as dark or disturbed characters (
Oliver Twist
’s Bill Sikes, Charles Bronson,
T
he Take
’s Freddie Jackson). His success in bringing these kinds of characters to life is in part down to his skill at seeing both the light as well as the shade in the characters he plays. He has explained that, if a character he is studying is essentially a dark character, he searches for the light in him and vice versa. Preparing for Shinzon – one of the first of such types he was to take on for the big screen – was no different. A hard worker and an actor who always strives to do better, Tom threw himself into capturing the opposing forces that made Shinzon complex and three-dimensional. Speaking to the
LA Times
, he commented: ‘He’s a monster, but he’s also a product
of circumstances who’s deeply in pain.’ Thankfully, the new
Star Trek
villain was in very capable hands. There would be no pantomime baddie performance from Tom.

Looks-wise, Tom and Patrick Stewart were not dissimilar – Stewart even commented that Tom was ‘the spitting image of me as a young man’ – but Tom’s physical appearance still had to be tweaked so that he genuinely looked as if he could have been created from the same DNA as his nemesis. One of the most noticeable things about Patrick Stewart’s – and therefore Picard’s – appearance is his baldness, so the hair clearly had to go. This was not a problem, as Tom had not long had his hair shaved off for his role in
Simon: An English Legionnaire
and so was no stranger to sporting a hairless pate. Tom’s lips were, unsurprisingly, slightly bigger that Stewart’s and this difference was addressed by making a fake scar for Tom’s mouth which gave his lips a look that was, as he put it, ‘slightly beaten’. The make-up team then went even further and took a cast of Patrick Stewart’s nose and chin to make latex replicas of them for Tom to wear. Tom explained the lengths to which they went in order to achieve the likeness to
Trekweb.com
: ‘We moulded the nose – several thousand noses, I think – before we got the right nose. Then, because my lips are slightly larger, we added a scar to take down the size of my lips. We had all this ready to go in latex but we had gelatine as well and under the lights my nose would sort of grow – and then sag.’

And while the costume Tom had to wear for the film was somewhat uncomfortable, he claimed its restrictive design actually assisted with his embodiment of the character of Shinzon. ‘It was incredibly uncomfortable, and within that
being uncomfortable it added to the character for me. You know what I mean? Because he’s a very bowed and repressed young man. That whole suit was very constricting and it didn’t allow much movement because his whole life hasn’t allowed much movement,’ he explained to
IGN
Movies
website. It certainly looked impressive on screen in all its rubber glory, but its spectacular appearance came at a price and Tom admitted that he’d needed physio on his back after spending so many hours encased in it!

Naturally, when it came to being on set, Tom spent the majority of his time working alongside Patrick Stewart. The young actor was conscious of the fact that he was relatively new to the game and, while it was a daunting prospect to star opposite someone as esteemed as Stewart, he took the opportunity to benefit from the wealth of the older actor’s experience. The pair took the time to sit and talk through their thoughts on what would work for their characters and Tom allowed himself to learn from the more seasoned actors around him. While on set, Stewart had plenty of time for Tom, but was mindful of the fact that, because of the nature of their on-screen relationship, it would be wise to keep a bit of distance between them: in other words, it wouldn’t benefit the dynamic of the film if they were to become best mates. ‘I didn’t want him to be someone I could have a beer with. It would have showed. But I liked him a lot,’ Stewart remarked.

As well as being relatively new to professional acting, Tom also had to cope with being a late addition to a
long-established
family of actors, the majority of whom were all
Star Trek
old hands. Although they were inclusive and welcoming, Tom realised that, by stepping into the scenario as
a villain, it was slightly easier for him to establish himself amongst them. The nature of his role meant that it was acceptable for him to fall outside the camaraderie of the main group of actors. ‘It was a group who are very accepting … It was quite bizarre having so many people who knew what they were doing – it was lucky that I was a villain, in many ways,’ he said.

There was one cast member in particular with whom Tom got on like a house on fire. Ron Perlman, who plays the Reman viceroy Vkruk in the film, is an experienced Hollywood actor who has appeared in countless movies and television series. Since
Star Trek: Nemesis
, Perlman is best known to cinema audiences for his role in the
Hellboy
movie franchise. Tom found it a pleasure to work with Perlman and has stated how generous and funny he was as a colleague on set. In more recent years, Perlman has expressed how much he enjoyed spending time with Tom and how delighted he is that Tom is now so in demand as an actor. Speaking to
Startrek.com
to commemorate the eight-year anniversary of the release of
Star Trek: Nemesis
, Perlman reflected generously: ‘Tom has become probably one of the most sought-after actors in the world. Did you see this movie he did,
Bronson
? It was brilliant. And now Tom is in everything. I loved him when I first met him. I loved working with him. I found him to be really smart, really a great kid. He was much younger then. He was also really humble and knew that he was kind of living a charmed life by playing major roles in major motion pictures. Everything I like about an actor was in this kid, and I’m so happy to see what’s happening to him now.’