Tom Hardy (2 page)

‘Find Me a Model’ appealed for gorgeous young hopefuls from all over the country aged between 16 and 24 to enter a series of regional heats for the chance to win a modelling contract with major international agency Models One. There were two contracts up for grabs, one for a female model and one for a male model. Back then, Tom sported
long hair and a skinnier frame than the one we are familiar with now, but his unique brand of looks appealed to the judges and he scooped the top spot. His female counterpart was pretty blonde Kirsty Richards. Speaking to
Arena Homme
in November 2010 about the competition, Tom recalled unhappily: ‘I stood there with this hair, this really big quiff the hairdresser had done and this ridiculous jumper while they went on about me not liking football but liking Steven Berkoff.’

With a contract in the bag, Tom set about his fledgling career as a model and got some high-profile shoots under his belt, including
Male Vogue
and fashion shoots with photographer Gino Sprio. And never let it be forgotten that he was also once Mr July in
Just Seventeen
magazine.

It will come as little surprise that Tom was a fish out of water in the world of photo shoots and catwalks. He had a huge desire to be noticed and appreciated, but he was putting himself in front of the wrong type of camera – his heart was a million miles away from modelling. ‘I tried to be a model when I was 19 and I was shit,’ he told the
Observer
in 2007. ‘I can only function when I become someone else.’

Tom had always been fascinated by acting and felt it was something at which he might succeed, but had never actively been pushed in that direction. He maintains that while he was at school, his aspirations as an actor were not encouraged – acting was not viewed as a profession, but rather as something to be pursued as a hobby. But to have acting merely as a part-time recreation was not an option for him.

‘I didn’t get any GCSEs or A-Levels,’ he said in an interview with the
indieLondon
website. ‘But everyone was like: “Please,
will you do something?” And I was thinking: “Well, I kind of like the idea of joining the French Foreign Legion.” But my mum said: “That’s never going to happen because you can’t even wash your own socks…” Then some angel somewhere said: “Have you ever considered going to drama school?” And this sounded like the solution to all my problems.’

He initially tried and failed to win a place at Drama Centre (which he would later attend) and so remained in a quandary about how to turn his thespian dreams into reality. It was his good fortune that, at the same time as he was trying to figure out the best way forward, his mother was studying Art at Richmond Adult Community College. She happened to notice that the college ran a one-year drama school access course and encouraged her son to audition. Reluctantly he did so and, in what would prove to be one of the turning points in his life, Tom secured himself a place on the course.

The purpose of an access course such as the one offered at Richmond is to teach pupils the basic tools of their craft. On completion of the course, students might choose to move on to a degree at drama school or they might follow a different acting-related path. Pupils who have completed the course have gone on to study at establishments such as LAMDA and Italia Conti as well as Drama Centre. It is also a good foundation course for students who wish to pursue a degree in drama via a university. The course at Richmond provides important training in the areas of text and voice work, physical theatre, movement, stage combat and preparing pieces for audition.

Tom has nothing but the highest praise for the course, recognising that, without it, he might not be where he is
today. ‘I really needed that string to my bow,’ he told the BBC in 2006. ‘It was a make or break year – I didn’t get into acting school the first time around and this was the stepping stone for me.’ He also recognises that the skills he acquired there were vital to a young actor learning his trade. He was taught ‘how to walk, transfer ideas to an audience, how to speak clearly, sing and dance, but perhaps most importantly, to strip a script down to the syllable and get down to the basics of what is being said.’

He describes the place as ‘a goldmine’ and, while he was a student there, relished the fact that professional actors would come and share their knowledge and experience with the pupils, giving them a genuine insight into the reality of their chosen profession. ‘It was a bit like having a soldier come in and tell you what weapons to use.’

In more recent years, Tom has chosen to repay the favour and has returned regularly to help teach students in the ‘Acting for Camera’ module of the course. He is passionate about giving something back to the profession he adores and, equally, the college has been more than happy for him to do so. As well as helping a new generation of actors he feels that, by teaching, he is able to build on his understanding of his profession. ‘I love my craft and I don’t like to see it abused. But I have to give it away to keep it – in doing so I can learn it again.’

To say that the course was the saving grace for the troubled youth, however, would be overstating it. Although he had been presented with a chance to do the one thing he felt he could have a shot at, the ruinous impulses were still very much in evidence and eventually he was kicked off the course
for not turning up to classes. To complete any kind of qualification requires a level of discipline and a certain willingness to adhere to the rules – something that Tom still fought against. His addiction to excess was always lurking in the background and, only a few years later, he would hit the self-destruct button in a spectacular fashion. But, for now, his potentially lethal energy had found an alternative conduit.

Despite being too cool for school, the training that Tom undertook at Richmond Drama School enabled him to progress in his chosen sphere. Second time lucky, in 1998, he got himself a place to study for a degree in Drama. He originally had his sights set on the much more conventional RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) but having failed to get in, he found himself at Drama Centre which, it could be said, was more of a fit for him. ‘With my physique and bow legs, I ended up going to the Drama Centre, which is full of characters and dysfunctional types,’ he commented in an interview in 2009. Step right in, Mr Hardy.

Today, Drama Centre is part of Central St Martins College of Art and is located in Clerkenwell, near Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Back when Tom was a student, the college was housed in the unconventional setting of a former Methodist chapel near Chalk Farm station, a stone’s throw from bustling Camden Market in North London. Although the aspiring actors have long gone, the building still stands and now houses a thriving exhibition space.

Drama Centre came into existence in 1963, when
co-founders
Christopher Fettes and the late Yat Malmgren broke away from the Central School of Speech and Drama to form their own acting school, taking a small group of students with
them. Amongst this initial intake – imaginatively labelled Group 1 – were formidable young talents such as Jack Shepherd and Frances de la Tour.

Over the years, Drama Centre has developed something of a mythological status to those outside its walls, even those who are themselves in the business of acting. It is different from any other drama school and, to the uninitiated, it can appear at best exclusive and at worst somewhat cultish. The rarefied atmosphere it projects owes itself to the unique and specific method of teaching adopted there.

Its intense approach to the craft is based around the work of Malmgren, who developed his own methodology, marrying the movement analysis of Rudolf von Laban and the psychoanalysis of Carl Jung. This prescribed approach to acting became known as ‘character analysis’. Drama Centre was – and is – the only drama school to teach in this way. ‘Because it’s only done at that place, it creates a lot of suspicion,’ said a former Drama Centre student, who joined the school the year prior to Tom. ‘There’s masses of jargon, so the words I would use to describe a character would not be understood by someone who has not attended the Drama Centre. When you come out, you need to unlearn being there to get on with “normal” people.’

The school is undoubtedly a tough place to study. The hours are long, the work is intense and students are not necessarily nurtured in the same way as at other institutions – the faint-hearted need not apply. When Tom was a student, a typical day would start at 10am, with classes going on until 5.30pm. Once classes were finished, rehearsals for that session’s end-of-term show would take place from 6pm until
9pm. In addition to coping with such a demanding
timetable
, students had to be hardy enough to deal with the feedback from tutors, which was often brutal – the ethos being to break a person down in order to build them back up again. Said the former student, ‘They can be hideous to you the whole way through and then, by the third year, think you are marvellous.’

In an interview on the subject, famous Drama Centre alumnus Colin Firth recalled: ‘I chose the Drama Centre because it had a reputation as a hard school, and I thought my resolve should be tested. Either you bend under pressure or you respond to the challenge. I can be very lazy and complacent unless I’m pushed, so I knew I’d be weeded out very quickly if I was making a mistake.’

Unrelenting it may have been, but for those with talent, resilience and determination there were huge rewards to be reaped. Some of the finest actors of their respective generations learned their trade there and have gone on to do remarkable work. Simon Callow, Tara Fitzgerald,
Anne-Marie
Duff and John Simm are all products of Drama Centre – some of whom Tom would find himself working alongside later in life.

So how did the young Tom Hardy, who had fought against applying himself in previous educational establishments, fare as a student in this fabled institution? It has been widely reported that he didn’t stay the full three years of the course and was kicked out at the end of the first year for being, in his own words, ‘a little shit’ (though he did return to study for the second year). His personality and behaviour, however, were not actually markedly different from any of his
contemporaries. He may have carried his share of troubles with him but he was in good company.

The fellow student observed: ‘He was quite intense, but mostly he was an entertainer – he’s a really funny guy. Much more known for telling jokes than for being dark and moody. He was a really positive person to be around, even if he was a bit tortured about stuff. He’s mentally really fast and hungry for everything. He’s a really intelligent guy whose brain ticks over at a rate of knots.’

When asked about Drama Centre, Tom acknowledges that the reputation of the place is, in part, founded upon the myths circulated by drama students from other schools. But he does confirm that a young actor there is stripped down with a particular intensity, which could be seen as a kind of ‘tough love’, as a preparation for the insanely competitive arena of acting where only 2 per cent of actors are ever in work. ‘It’s about terror. And the terror is actually about honesty – terror that is, in the term not to do with terrorism but in the term to do with: why do you want to be an actor? There are millions of people out there who want to be an actor. And even if you are any good at what you do, what makes you think you should be doing that? How hard are you prepared to work?’

And, for a while, Tom was prepared to work hard. During his time as a drama student, he appeared in productions of
Measure for Measure, Tartuffe, The Matchmaker, Ivanov, Filumena
and
Anatol
. In
Anatol
, it was Christopher Fettes himself who directed Tom. According to the fellow student: ‘They didn’t give Tom the easiest time but they obviously really liked him. He knows what to do. He knows what’s funny, he
knows how to time things. He seems really comfortable in it, intense as he is… he was always bloody good.’

Though Drama Centre was steering Tom towards the one career in which he truly felt he had a chance of success, he was still falling prey to his addictions and throughout his time as a student there, was drinking heavily and using drugs – as he put it, his vices were ‘anything I could lay my hands on. You name it, I took it.’

As if the intensity of an acting degree at Drama Centre and the chaos of his addictions wasn’t enough to keep Tom distracted from himself, he then experienced another
life-changing
event. True to form, it was erratic and spontaneous. As 1998 drew to a close, while he was out and about in London’s Covent Garden, Tom met a production assistant (now producer) Sarah Ward. Something clicked between the pair and, three weeks after setting eyes on each other, they got married. It was, according to Tom, ‘pretty crazy but very exciting at the same time’.

Whatever the circumstances surrounding this whirlwind relationship, there can be no doubt about the strength of Tom’s feelings for Ward. Although the marriage would, in the end, not withstand the insurmountable obstacle of Tom’s addictions, his feelings for her were genuine. ‘I loved Sarah and I still do and we married for all the right reasons,’ he told Nick Curtis of the
Evening Standard
in 2006. ‘I feel she saved my life on numerous occasions. But in hindsight, we didn’t have the best reasons to stay married, for the health of everyone involved.’

Like so many of those who are dear to Tom or who have played a significant part in his life, Ward has been
commemorated in one of his many pieces of body art. On the right-hand side of his lower torso, roughly parallel with his belly button, is inscribed in large letters ‘Till I die SW’. The dragon on Tom’s left arm is also a tribute to Ward, who was born in the Chinese year of the dragon. In recent years, Tom has admitted that the dragon tattoo was ‘a mistake’ and has even tattooed over some of the places on his body where her initials were etched, in one instance with a rock design.

For Tom, however, his tattoos are more than mere decoration. He has admitted that, in his younger days, they existed as a way for him to disguise who he really was, a means of drawing attention away from the unease of his existence. As he has gone through life, he has continued to add tattoos to his body and they now collectively serve as reference points to his life. ‘Every tattoo I have means something to me. Each one is something that I’ve been through in my life or I’ve done, or I’ve been. So I map that out on me, where I’ve been and where I’m going.’