Tom Hardy – MovieActors.com

About Tom Hardy (1977 – )

Tom Hardy was born in Hammersmith, London, the only child of Anne (née Barrett), an artist and painter whose family was of Irish descent, and Edward "Chips" Hardy, a comedy writer and novelist. He was raised in East Sheen, London. He studied first at Tower House School and Reed's School, then at Richmond Drama School, and finally at the Drama Centre London.

In 1998, Hardy joined Drama Centre London in September 1998, and was taken out early after winning the part of US Army Private John Janovec in the award-winning miniseries Band of Brothers. He made his feature film debut in Ridley Scott's 2001 war thriller Black Hawk Down. In 2003, Hardy appeared in the film dot the i, and then travelled to North Africa for Simon: An English Legionnaire, set in the French Foreign Legion. That same year, he gained considerable international exposure as the Reman Praetor Shinzon, a clone of USS Enterprise Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: Nemesis. He then returned to England to feature in the 2003 film LD 50 Lethal Dose.

Hardy won the 2003 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Outstanding Newcomer for his work in Blood and In Arabia We'd All Be Kings. Hardy appeared in the 2005 miniseries The Virgin Queen as Robert Dudley, a childhood friend of Elizabeth I. The miniseries portrays them as having a platonic, though highly romantic, affair throughout her reign over England during the 16th century. Hardy was also featured in an adaptation of the 1960s sci-fi series A for Andromeda.

In 2007, he appeared in Stuart: A Life Backwards, in which he played the role of Stuart Shorter, a homeless man who'd suffered years of abuse and whose death was possibly a suicide. The following year he played a drug-addicted rapist in the British horror-thriller WΔZ, before appearing in Guy Ritchie's London gangster film, RocknRolla as the gay gangster Handsome Bob. In early 2009, Hardy starred in Bronson, about real-life English prisoner Charles Bronson, who has spent most of his adult life in solitary confinement.

In June 2009, Hardy starred in Martina Cole's four-part TV drama The Take on Sky One, as a drugs and alcohol fueled gangster. In August 2009 he appeared in Wuthering Heights as Heathcliff, who famously falls in love with his childhood friend Cathy.

In early 2010, Hardy starred in The Long Red Road at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. The play was written by Brett C. Leonard and directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hardy received good reviews for his portrayal of Sam, an alcoholic trying to drink away his past. In 2010, he starred as Eames in Christopher Nolan's science fiction thriller Inception. The following year he replaced Michael Fassbender in the 2011 adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Hardy won critical acclaim in the film Warrior, starring as Tommy Riordan, who is trained by his father to fight in a mixed martial arts tournament against his brother. Hardy also starred in This Means War, a 2012 romantic comedy film directed by McG. He snagged his highest-profile role to that point in his career playing the supervillain Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, and played a bootlegger the same year in John Hillcoat's Lawless.

Hardy played the title character, Max Rockatansky, in 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road. Critics praised his performance and the film as well, which became an enormous box office success.

Hardy married Sarah Ward in 1999, but the two divorced in 2004. He has a son, Louis Thomas (born 2008), with then-girlfriend Rachael Speed, with whom he was involved from 2004 to 2009.

In 2009, Hardy began a relationship with actress Charlotte Riley, whom he met on the set of Wuthering Heights. They became engaged in 2010 and married in July 2014. In October 2015 they welcomed their first child together.

In 2010, Hardy became an ambassador for the Prince's Trust, a UK youth charity. In 2012, he and Riley became patrons of Bowel Cancer UK.

Hardy battled addictions to alcohol and crack cocaine in his early-to-mid-20s. He has been sober since 2003 after entering rehab.

Tom Hardy's movie credits include...

Tom Hardy's television credits include...

Memorable Quotes

“You don't step on stage to eat, you go there to be eaten.”

“I'm from East Sheen, I went to public school where I learned Latin at the age of nine, and certain expectations were made of me to go to St Paul's, Oxbridge maybe, and all that kind of thing. And I failed systematically to meet the mark - who I am and what I should have been are two very different things.”

“I want to dispel that it's all about celebrity-ism, I'm fucking bored of people looking at whose shoes are interesting and what hat is interesting. Storytelling is very important to people, it comforts them, unite us, cheers us up, we can affect change with these arts. We need to be entertained to connect.”

“(on getting sober in 2003) I went entirely off the rails and I'm lucky I didn't have some terrible accident or end up in prison or dead, because that's where I was going. Now I know my beast and I know how to manage it. It's like living with a 400 pound orangutan that wants to kill me. It's much more powerful than me, doesn't speak the same language and it runs around the darkness of my soul.”

“I don't feel very manly. I don't feel rugged and strong and capable in real life, not how I imagine a man ought to be. So I seek it, to mimic it and maybe understand it, or maybe to draw it into my own reality. People who are scary, they terrify me, but I can imitate them. I'm not a fighter. I'm a petite little bourgeois boy from London. I don't fight, I mimic.”

Did You Know

Trained under Sir Anthony Hopkins' former mentor at the London Drama Centre.

He battled alcoholism and a crack cocaine addiction in his early-to mid-twenties, but has been sober since 2003.

Is the only actor to play a villain in a Star Trek film and a Batman film.

Leonardo DiCaprio convinced him to read the script of The Revenant (2015) and take the role of John Fitzgerald. They became friends after starring together in Inception (2010).

In 2012, he played a role where he wore a mask for much of the film's runtime (The Dark Knight Rises). In 2013, he played a role where he was inside a vehicle for much of the film's runtime (Locke). In 2015, he combined the two... playing a role that, for much of the film's runtime, had him both inside a vehicle and wearing a mask (Mad Max: Fury Road).