Tom Hardy (13 page)

When recalling the making of
RocknRolla
, Tom confessed that there had been a great atmosphere on set and a lot of ‘schoolboy humour’. Although the cast was almost entirely male, the presence of females on set prevented things from becoming too laddish. He got a shock, though, when a very
notable female appeared on set one day. Just as Tom was sitting in Bob’s Land Rover, preparing for his big confessional scene with Gerard Butler, who should appear in the back of the car but Madonna herself! So in awe was Tom that he admits he can’t recall the conversation they shared.

One thing he can remember, though, is what happened next. Gerard Butler had apparently been feeling under the weather that day and Madonna insisted that he have a Vitamin B12 jab. But not in the arm… ‘Then she gave Gerard Butler a shot of Vitamin B in the arse in the back of the f*****g Range Rover! Gerard Butler’s flabby arse came through the window and she shot it with a jab of B12. Right in his arse! As attractive as he is, his arse just has no appeal to me. It’s a distraction when I’m trying to learn my lines!’ he told
Attitude
magazine in 2008.

A lot of filming took place in London, which has a strong presence in the film. Shooting was also a swift affair, according to the stars: Ritchie was efficient with structuring his work, always knowing what he was setting out to achieve. Unlike a director such as Ridley Scott who shoots as he wants to edit, Ritchie would tinker with the look, feel and structure of his story at editing stage. ‘There’s the film that we all read on the script and then the film that’s in Guy’s head and sometimes you’re not going to know what that is… until I saw [sic] the final edit,’ remarked Tom.

Unfortunately, the film contained several out-of-date references which jarred and gave the impression that it was too much of a hark back to the Ritchie films of the nineties. In
RocknRolla
, Tony Blair is still the Prime Minister and we are told in the opening sequence that London property prices
are on the rise (which was far from the truth towards the end of 2008). Some enjoyed the film not for its plot but for its atmosphere and sense of fun, but most were unimpressed. Christopher Tookey writing for the
Daily Mail
thought it was an ‘embarrassing piece of self-parody’.

Tom, though, had wanted to work with Guy Ritchie for a long time and was delighted to have been able to do so. ‘He’s my boy,’ he once said of the director. At the end of the movie, there had been an indication that sequels were in the offing, but it’s not particularly astonishing that none has been forthcoming. Besides, Ritchie has since had his renaissance with the
Sherlock Holmes
films starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. When Tom was asked in an interview what would become of his character if a sequel were to be made, he replied cheerily that he would get to wear ‘sparkly boots and better clothes’.

Ritchie could perhaps have taken a lesson about
pared-down
, less ostentatious film-making from a young man called Charlie Belleville. At just 23 years old, Belleville directed his first full-length movie. It was shot in 11 days on a budget of just
£
5,000 – shame on you, Hollywood blockbusters.
The Inheritance
was written by
Edinburgh-born
producer Tim Barrow and told the story of two estranged brothers who travel from Edinburgh to the Isle of Skye to claim the legacy left to them by their father. By day, Belleville worked in PR but had fitted in the directing project around his nine-to-five job.

Belleville knew Tom Hardy through friends and, with a stroke of luck, he managed to get him – as well as the other actors who appeared – to star in the film for free. The cast
was small, with Tim Barrow and Fraser Sivewright playing the brothers, Tom Hardy playing their father and Imogen Toner as Tara, a hitchhiker the brothers pick up on their road trip. Shooting took place entirely in Scotland and only in natural light, so the filming schedule was compact to say the least. The scenes with Tom were used as flashbacks in the film and shot in London.

Charlie Belleville expressed huge gratitude to Tom for giving up his time when he was just fresh off the set from
RocknRolla
. He was also very impressed with Tom’s grasp of a Scottish accent for the film, which sounded totally authentic.

The Inheritance
premiered at London’s Raindance Film Festival in the autumn of 2007 and was shortlisted with four other films in the Best UK Feature category in the Raindance awards. ‘We were so lucky to get Tom Hardy,’ Charlie enthused to Edinburgh’s
Evening News
. ‘He is such an accomplished actor and it has given the film a terrific sense of legitimacy when we are competing against so many other
low-budget
films.’

Although the film missed out on the prize at the festival, it was then nominated – and won – the Raindance Award at the British Independent Film Awards later that year. On top of that, it was nominated for Best First Time Director and Best First Time Producer at BAFTA Scotland’s 2007 New Talent Awards. It also boasted a wealth of positive reviews, with
Time Out
referring to Belleville as ‘a talent to watch’.

Tom said that when he saw the final cut of the film at the festival, he was thrilled with what had been achieved. ‘Everything that was stacked against
The Inheritance
… it’s incredible that the piece actually made it to the screen, for
starters – and then I think the bonus of it is that it’s an
award-winning
film.’ He also pointed out that it was a spectacular achievement, given that it was made with scant finance.

It’s perhaps ironic that just as Tom was carving a name for himself as the go-to man for tough guy roles, something happened in his life that brought the nurturing, softer side of the actor to the fore – he became a father. On 8 April 2008, Louis was born to Tom and Rachael Speed.

Becoming a parent means that priorities in life change and everything centres around the new life that has been brought into the world. For Tom, having a son was undoubtedly a grounding experience and one which drew a line under the life he’d previously lived. ‘Having my son stripped away so much unnecessary baggage,’ he reflected a few years after Louis was born.

During the filming of
RocknRolla
, Tom had noted the irony of being cast as the getaway driver even though he was not able to drive. That changed, however, when he realised that he needed to be able to drive Rachael to and from hospital during the pregnancy. By this time Tom was 30 and it was probably high time he got his licence – the fact that he hadn’t done so until this point was a hangover from his wayward youth. In an interview with the
Observer
, he said: ‘I couldn’t be trusted with a car when I was younger, so I got used to travelling by tube… I love it because it’s new to me. I’ve got years of driving to catch up on.’

The fact he can now drive has brought additional benefits for Tom. Car manufacturer Audi saw something in the actor they liked and he currently has a promotional deal with them so is now only to be seen behind the wheel of an Audi motor.
‘People ask me about cars and I am all about the Audis. All I ever drive.’ No surprise there – these deals are lucrative and the manufacturer will always want to guarantee exclusivity for the relationship between the product and its celebrity endorser. You’ll never see Roger Federer holding anything other than a Wilson tennis racket, for example.

Tom makes no secret of how proud a father he is, often taking photos of his son to show journalists when he pitches up for an interview. A burgeoning career and supportive family have played their parts in helping Tom on the path to rehabilitation but Louis is a very real reminder as to why he can never go back to his old ways. ‘There are two things that are great in my life,’ he told
Marie Claire
magazine in 2011, ‘One is my family and the other is my work, and I will protect both to the death.’

He has also mused about the contrast between the disturbed, psychotic screen characters he has become so synonymous with and the doting father that he really is. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? The characters I’ve played have been mostly violent, and I’m so far from being violent or aggressive. I spend a lot of time watching
Fireman Sam
with my three-
year-old
son Louis,’ he reflected when speaking to the
Daily
Telegraph
in 2011. There’s an image that’s sure to make women’s hearts melt – hard man Tom snuggled up on the sofa with his little boy watching children’s TV.

As Tom’s career grows and he becomes an international star, inevitably he will have to endure long periods of time away from the UK – and from his son. He has spoken of his concerns about being a long-distance father but is aware that if he suffers a little bit for it now, hopefully in the future he
might be able to pick and choose his commitments a bit more freely, just as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie now do in order to look after their sizeable brood. Plus, of course, he wants to keep working so that he can make sure Louis has everything he needs as he is growing up. ‘I am very much aware of being a Skype father, which is really sad sometimes,’ he told
Hello
magazine in 2012 as he prepared to up sticks in order to start filming
Mad Max
. ‘But one reason I’m away so often is to secure enough finances, so that in the future I can choose to go away for shorter periods and command enough money to bring my family with me. At the moment I’m just doing what I have to do.’

Whilst he obviously doesn’t like being apart from Louis, he is able to rest safe in the knowledge that when he’s not in the UK, his son is looked after by Rachael and her husband – and he also told
Hello
that Rachael is now pregnant again, so Louis will have a half-sibling to keep him company.

It was good fortune that just as Tom took on the responsibility of being a father, so his career started on a steep upward trajectory. He was chosen to portray two very different but equally challenging real-life characters in dramatisations of their lives. The two performances would be the start of establishing Tom’s reputation as one of the finest actors of our time.

‘T
om is a shape shifter. His best work is done when he is entering into a character that isn’t himself.’ These words were spoken by Tom’s friend, the director Robert Delamere, and never was the actor’s transformative ability more in evidence than when he took on first the role of Stuart Shorter in
Stuart: A Life Backwards
and then Charles Bronson, Britain’s most notorious prisoner, in
Bronson
. These two utterly contrasting roles were pivotal in shifting Tom’s career up a gear and marked the beginning of his metamorphosis from jobbing actor to big star.

Stuart: A Life Backwards
by Alexander Masters was published in 2005 and went on to become an unlikely bestseller. It was an unconventional book in many ways. Its hero was, at first glance, something of an anti-hero – a homeless man with multiple drug addictions; an alcoholic with a disturbed mind who was prone to unpredictable bouts
of rage. The book also fell somewhere between biography and memoir – plus, as its title suggests, it tells the story of a life in reverse chronological order.

Masters first encountered Stuart in 1998 in Cambridge, where they both lived – albeit in very different circumstances. Masters was a writer who worked part-time as a fundraiser for Wintercomfort, a day shelter for rough sleepers in the city. When the two people who ran the shelter were wrongfully arrested and imprisoned over drug-dealing allegations at Wintercomfort (it was in fact some of the homeless people who used the centre who were dealing drugs on the premises, unbeknown to the managers), Alexander was, rightly, incensed at what had happened and launched a campaign to Free the Cambridge Two. It was at one of the meetings about the appeal that he met Stuart and the two became unlikely friends.

At the start of the book, Masters describes Stuart as a ‘thief, hostage taker, psycho and sociopathic street raconteur, my spy on how the British chaotic underclass spend their troubled days at the beginning of the 21st century’. He was at first fascinated by Stuart but, as he came to spend more time with him, a genuine friendship evolved between them. Masters was intrigued by Stuart’s life and what had made him the man he became, so persuaded Stuart to let him write his life story. The first draft took two years to complete but was rejected by its subject. Stuart felt that the structure of the story was boring and that it should be more like a murder mystery, where the plot builds towards the revelation. As he put it, he wanted the reader to discover ‘what murdered the boy I was…’.

Although the subject matter is not the usual sort of fodder
for a biography/memoir, the book was a hit and went on to win awards, including the
Guardian
First Book Award in 2005. The critical acclaim and healthy sales were thoroughly deserved: the book’s structure was unique and captivating, and the author’s depiction of Stuart inspired tears, laughter and frustration – we see Stuart through Alexander’s eyes and we feel for him as the author does. It was an important book to have written because it was a story that needed to be told – people like Stuart are rarely given a voice, especially one as eloquent as Masters’.

Literary critics were united in their praise for
Stuart
. Minette Martin in the
Sunday Times
described it as: ‘One of the most remarkable and touching biographies I’ve ever read. It also raises more urgent, contemporary questions about the human condition than any other biography I can think of.’ Anne Chisholm, writing in the
Sunday Telegraph
, said the book was ‘humane, instructive and entirely original’.

When a book catches readers’ imaginations as
Stuart
did, hearts sink slightly at the prospect of the story being made into a film, be it for television or the big screen. Readers often feel a sense of ownership towards a book they love and worry that changes might be made during dramatisation. So it would have been a relief for fans to learn that the author of the book was to turn screenwriter for the TV film – at least Stuart and Masters’ story would remain in the hands of its originator. Production company Neal Street was to make
Stuart: A Life Backwards
, with David Attwood directing and Pippa Harris producing. The executive producers would be Oscar-winning Sam Mendes along with Tara Cook.

While Masters was in charge of adapting his book, he was
of course justified in having concerns about who would take on the two lead roles. According to Pippa Harris, when he initially went to see Neal Street, he spent a long time asking them questions about how they would approach the film and who might star in it. One actor would have to do justice to his complicated, many-faceted friend, Stuart and the other would have to, well, be an accurate representation of himself. He needn’t have worried. There were, apparently, only ever two actors on the wish list for the roles.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s reputation as a talented new face was steadily growing and he had a healthy body of work behind him. He’d not yet reached the heady heights of fame and adulation that
Sherlock
would bring him, but it was clear he was an intelligent, gifted man who had the potential to become a star. His turn in the film adaptation of David Nicholls’ book
Starter for Ten
(on which, coincidentally, he’d worked with Pippa Harris) had been one of the most memorable performances in the movie. He had also previously worked with David Attwood on another BBC drama,
To The Ends of the Earth
. Cumberbatch’s attachment to
Stuart: A Life Backwards
started with an introduction to Alexander Masters who had come to see a play he was in at the Almeida with Harris and Attwood. Cumberbatch had heard good things about the book and had listened to the Radio Four adaptation, so was familiar with the story. It was later, while he was filming
Atonement
, that he got the call about the part of Masters – he read the script, loved it and was on board.

The only actor ever on the cards to play Stuart was Tom. In fact, Pippa Harris has subsequently said that both she and
David Attwood knew that he was born to play the part. When speaking to the
Daily Telegraph
, Attwood said: ‘In many ways Tom is very similar to Stuart. He is an addict. He is slightly crazy. He is damaged and wounded. But, unlike Stuart, he has come out the other side.’ Tom found it amusing that he was considered the ideal actor for this alcoholic,
drug-addicted
street-dweller. But he shared the opinion and made no secret of how badly he wanted the part. ‘I fell in love with the piece. I could hear the music of it,’ he later commented.

Tom is a stickler for getting his performances technically perfect so that they look and feel authentic and he had a lot of preparation to do for
Stuart
before he even appeared on set. He recognised that Stuart had multiple issues that he as an actor had to learn how to represent. There were certain points of reference that Tom already had, due to the life he had once lived: with alcoholism, drug addiction, brushes with the police and, to an extent street living, he had his own catalogue of experiences he could refer back to. More complex and challenging would be getting to grips with areas of Stuart’s life of which he had no personal experience, such as living in care, childhood sexual abuse and having to live with muscular dystrophy (a debilitating condition which gradually weakens muscle cells in the body). Tom felt that the key to successfully capturing Stuart would be not to focus on one element of his personality or circumstances but to portray him in a complete way. He described Stuart as ‘a very ordinary guy with an incredible amount of baggage, trying to break out of all the baggage, constantly’.

These days, Tom’s ability to physically transform for a role has become something of a trademark. As well as preparing
the mental groundwork for Stuart, he also had to consider how his body would need to appear for him to look the part. Stuart was, after all, an alcoholic ex-junkie and his frame was much slighter than the average man. Prior to landing Stuart, Tom had been packing on muscle in preparation for playing Charles Bronson, which was then put on hold because of financial problems. Then
Stuart
came along and he needed to reverse what he’d been doing to his physique. To ensure he did this sensibly, he employed nutritionist Lisa Jeans who made him run five to seven miles a day and put him on a diet consisting of blueberries, boiled eggs, apples, salad and tuna. It worked and he shed over two stone in just five weeks. ‘Lisa was brilliant, and I need all the help I can get,’ said Tom to the
Evening Standard
. He didn’t fancy embarking on a Christian Bale-style starvation programme to lose his weight, noting ‘I’m not as wired as he is.’ He also recognised that he needed his brain to be working properly in order to meet the challenge of this demanding role and for that to happen, he needed to feed it the right ingredients.

Tom also had to take on board the physical effects that Stuart’s illness would have had on how he moved his body. ‘When I was filming, I attached 5kg weights to both of my ankles and an elastic band around my upper body so I couldn’t lift my arms,’ he admitted to the
Daily Telegraph
.

They say you reap what you sow and in this case, Tom’s detailed, exacting character preparation for Stuart paid huge dividends. Alexander Masters has recounted in a piece written for the
Evening Standard
how Tom had asked him if he was like Stuart, to which the writer had replied: ‘Well, you talk the ear off your listener just as much.’ He had then expressed
concern as to whether Tom could have understood ‘the sheer pain in his life.’ However, he went on, ‘Later, watching rushes of Tom I had to leave the room,’ saying, ‘They were too good, too close to memory’.

Masters was stunned by how close he came to the real Stuart. In what was unquestionably a difficult role, he had perfectly captured his character’s humour, his insight and of course his pain and anger. Speaking to
The Times
at the time the drama was aired, he again couldn’t speak highly enough of Tom: ‘It’s a stunning performance. Tom seems to have absorbed the character completely. On and off set, he
lived
the character.’

Benedict Cumberbatch was always determined that he wouldn’t deliver just an imitation of Alexander Masters. He knew he needed to capture the essence of the man and his relationship with Stuart. He was aware that Alexander needed to be presented as an everyman figure but that he must appeal to the viewer, that they had to like him enough to be taken on the journey through Stuart’s life with him. Prior to filming, he met Masters a few times and asked him questions about his parents and the kind of life he’d lived. Masters was always, according to the actor, ‘affable and supportive.’ Cumberbatch also spent a day as a volunteer at Crisis in London, to experience the atmosphere and the kind of care that the people who work there offer to the homeless.

Crucial to both actors was that, as well as doing justice to their individual characters, they established the nature of the special relationship between the two men. Cumberbatch commented on the stark contrast between them and how the friendship would work on screen: ‘What on the face of it
could be a very uneasy partnership between a, sort of, nice, middle-class studentish type of guy… and this very
worldly-wise
, street, ex-psychopath, poly-drug-addicted, homeless fiend of a fireball of humanity. They’re quite polar opposites and that’s what’s charming about it.’

Benedict Cumberbatch was aware of the importance of the synergy between them and observed, ‘There’s a relationship that we have as actors together off camera which means there’s a real intimacy to what we do when the camera starts rolling.’ He was also fulsome in his praise of Tom’s skill as an actor, commenting that he had ‘inhabited Stuart in such a beautiful way’.

The two actors had known of each other before
Stuart
, but they hadn’t previously had the opportunity of working together. As their partnership developed, so did a mutual respect which, as well as allowing their individual performances to flourish, ensured the bond they formed carried through into their portrayal of the Stuart/Alexander friendship. Tom said of his co-star: ‘He’s a very generous, very sensitive, very thoughtful, focussed, disciplined actor… he’s got it.’

All credit to the two of them, they perfectly captured the unconventional affinity that had existed between the men. Alexander Masters had always maintained that the most important thing in dramatising his book was that this relationship was right, and the proof that they had succeeded in this was in evidence on one occasion when the author was on set. He was watching a scene being played out on one of the monitors and so moving was it that he had to step away, overcome with emotion.

As he had done in
Black Hawk Down
and
Band of Brothers
, Tom was playing a real person. The responsibility of doing justice to Stuart’s character and his life was particularly relevant for Tom, as Stuart had only passed away a few years prior to the book being published and the film being made – he had to be played, as Tom put it ‘with taste and integrity’. It was also essential that Stuart’s family were happy with how the drama portrayed him. Both Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom spent time with Stuart’s family, who were incredibly helpful and answered any questions the actors had about Stuart and his life.

The drama was filmed in both Cambridge and London and homeless people from Cambridge were used as extras.
Stuart:
A Life Backwards
was shown on BBC2 on a Sunday night in September 2007 and achieved everything it had set out to do. It remained faithful to the structure and spirit of the original book and the two lead performances were breathtaking. Stuart was a complicated character, but so much love and care had gone into Tom’s performance that it radiated out of the television to touch the viewer. The quiet assurance of Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Alexander Masters and the little quirks he brought to the character made him fascinating and sympathetic. The drama was funny, heartbreaking and poignant.