Tag: tom hardy

While Tom Hardy is, without a doubt, a genuine movie star, I do wonder if his route to becoming a movie star could have been a lot different and more straight-forward. He was a beautiful guy and he’s still good-looking in a grizzled sort of way. He’s always been a great actor. He could have been a traditional leading man in a variety of huge studio productions. But for the better part of a decade, he goes back and forth from the Venom franchise to weirder, more offbeat projects. Currently, he’s promoting MobLand, which is already hugely successful on Paramount , and that’s why he covers the summer issue of Esquire UK. Some highlights from his interview, the first long-read piece I’ve read with him in many years.

He’s dizzy: “I got dizzy today. I took a Sudafed and it’s starting to work, so I feel better but in the interviews I was sitting there, and you know when you feel not right, but you can’t tell someone you don’t feel right? Like, ‘Listen, if I pass out…’”

Bodily ailments. “I’ve had two knee surgeries now, my disc’s herniated in my back, I’ve got sciatica as well. And I have that… is it plantar fasciitis? Where did that come from? And why? Why?! And I pulled my tendon in my hip as well. It’s like, it’s all falling to bits now, and it’s not going to get better.”

He might do a stem-cell treatment: “Unless you do all the stem cells…Probably, yeah. I think if it comes down to the wire and it seems the sensible thing to do and I take advice.”

The $1.8 billion Venom franchise: “I loved playing Eddie in Venom. Juggling chainsaws… Put me on a unicycle and throw everything at me! I was just really trying to push myself as much as I could. But I had no Spider-Man! No Avengers! It’s just us. Until those bridges are crossed… That’s way beyond my control. And I’d love to do that, but that’s not even a conversation to have at my level, of just being an actor in that world…. We played in the Sony counterpoint to Disney’s Marvel panoply, of which [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige has a huge amount of cards, and Sony has a huge amount of cards in its own right, including Spider-Man, and then there’s just no crossover. We’d love to cross over! That’s not happened. That’s what happens, and it’s one of those things.”

Whether he has a fulfilling career: “The more I know, Miranda, the less I know. If becoming a successful actor was climbing Everest, and I got to the summit, it was a false summit. Because there was another climb!” He wheezes with laughter. “It opened up my head beyond just acting,” he says of his recent expanded responsibilities, “to problem-solving, where I probably don’t belong. At least initially, because nobody wants to hear what an actor has to say. Some people are really good at the social politics. I’m not. I just want to act, do stories. I like the money, because that’s financial security. But I don’t want a G6 or more meat in my hamburger, yellow M&Ms. The control I’m after is feeling safe in the character. ‘I can pull this off: this is a challenge, but not so much of a challenge that I won’t be able to return on investment.’ That’s different to ‘Does the director like what I did?’”

His ambition has shifted: “There’s a sort of, I guess, maturing. I’ve done a little bit in every single genre that I’ve ever wanted to do, and I’ve played on some big fields, you know? I’ve done some stinkers, I’ve done some cool things, I’ve played with some really amazing luminaries and people, I’ve had some really cool opportunities. I’m not retiring myself but I’m just saying, ‘What do you want to do with that?’ I’ve been running at something that I had to run at, to get an understanding that it’s not going anywhere. There’s only more, more, more. Of what? Stomach ulcers? Blood pressure? Your knees are going, your hair’s falling out, your teeth are wonky, you’re almost 50… Maybe it’s a self-worth thing, maybe it’s not finishing school, maybe it’s not being good enough. But all this ‘I’ll show, I’ll show’… Show who? No one cares! I know I can do it. Well then, chill out. Powerless is a key motive. How do you handle your powerlessness? And then there are the existential questions of, why am I even here? Why do I have to die alone? Haha!”

[From Esquire UK]

He has chilled out a lot in the past decade. I remember the stories about him circa Mad Max: Fury Road, and what an unprofessional sh-thead he was back then. Being given some power and having to shoulder the responsibility for some huge productions has changed him. Plus, when your body starts to fall apart, that’s humbling. I don’t have anywhere near the kind of injuries he’s sustained, but I’m also at the point where I just want to sit quietly with an ice pack on whatever hurts. He’s realized that no matter his successes, there’s always more, more to prove, more power to attain, more more more. And his body just HURTS. And he’s tired and he’s zonked out on Sudafed. Anyway, I kind of loved this interview.

Cover courtesy of Esquire UK, additional pics courtesy of Avalon Red.

Tom Hardy covers the Autumn issue of Esquire UK to promote Venom: Let There Be Carnage. That’s the sequel to the surprisingly successful first Venom movie. I didn’t realize that Venom made more than $850 million worldwide, so of course they put together a sequel. The first film worked better than it had any right to, and that was largely because of Tom Hardy and Riz Ahmed. The acting was pretty good and that grounded what could have been a very stupid movie. Not only has Tom returned as the same character, he’s now taking on a producer role, and he and his writing partner came up with some of the story for the sequel. Tom chatted with Esquire UK about all of that and more – you can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

Doing Venom right for the fans: “There were other objectives with Venom, but they were minor compared to the main objective: can I land Eddie Brock and Venom as an established Marvel superhero? Venom and Eddie Brock are part of a universal canon among those who know about superheroes, so I don’t want to scratch the record. I’d like to be part of that legacy and not bugger it up completely. Not bring shame on it. Ha! You’ve got Black Panther, Thor, Wonder Woman, Venom; there’s not one that you go, ‘Ooh God, have you seen that? That’s f–king terrible! Avoid the f–king terrible one!’ Maybe people dislike it, maybe people really like it, but it’s not dismissed.”

How he felt at the start of the pandemic: “When everybody was starting to store toilet paper and take things off the shelves it was like, hang on, do we need to arm ourselves? Is this the zombie apocalypse? There was a moment at the beginning where it was like, are people going to riot?” (Hardy did stockpile “vitamin D, vitamin K and nappies.”)

How he managed during the pandemic: “Fifteen-minute workouts in the garden, home-schooling and making sourdough.” Home-schooling was “very tough”, but the sourdough at least he quite enjoyed. “I still have the leaven! You have to feed that every day. That’s a commitment. I’ve actually managed to back it up so I’ve got two. Just in case someone drops one on the floor or the jar explodes and it’s like, ‘That’s a year-and-a-half’s work!’”

His lockdown fantasies: “I was thinking I might open up a sourdough café. Coffee and sourdough and jiu-jitsu and AA meetings. You can bring your dog.”

His kids: The youngest of whom are two and five, and found that an early-to-bed, early-to-rise regimen suited him too. “I didn’t pay much attention to structure and discipline as a kid,” he says. “But without it now, being a father, I’m lost.”

He stared into the abyss: “I had an opportunity to observe the world and my own behaviours and how I lived my life and what’s important and what isn’t. I spent a lot of time fighting the concept of ‘grown-up’. I think all the baddies and all those sorts of ‘grrrr’ characters that I’ve played, I’m not that. The whole acting thing has been kind of peacock-ish, counter to what I am. What’s most indelible on my memory are things that are shocking or scary so it’s very easy to mimic them. It’s actually much harder to mimic things that are soft and nice and intimate if you don’t grow up in that way. Now I’m getting older these things are becoming less scary. So it’s not caring so much what people think.”

Realizing what’s important: “I think there’s less reason to work, ultimately, because the life-drive is to be with the kids and to be fit and healthy and eat well and stuff. If you’ve got a roof over your head and a bed underneath you and food in the fridge, how much is enough? Because it’s not a dress rehearsal, life, is it? It’s going out live. This is one-time.”

He’s not worried about disappearing: “I’m not so worried to disappear now. When I was a youngster you had to be heard, otherwise you’d be invisible. Once you’ve established yourself you can stop making that much noise. Because you’re here now, what are you going to do? And what is enough? What do you need? What do my family need? So that is very relevant. I think everybody needs a little bit of their own thing that they do. I like jiu-jitsu and sourdough. That fulfils me.”

[From Esquire UK]

He sounds like he’s in a better place these days, just in general, with his work-life balance and figuring out the pandemic and wanting to be around for his two little kids. I went into this interview thinking he was going to be a douche, and while he did come in late and while he did try to avoid actually answering real questions for a while, he ended up giving Esquire what they needed, which was some sense of reflection, that he’s maturing as a man and a professional. The bar is so low for attractive white men, right? He says some stuff about his kids and baking and most people are like “omg, KING!”

Cover & IG courtesy of Esquire UK.