Tom Hardy (22 page)

As 2011 drew to a close, it seemed as if Gary Oldman’s predictions about Tom were coming true. He was turning in critically acclaimed performances; his openness, sense of humour and down-to-earth nature were gaining him fans the world over; and on a personal level, he seemed to be more than content: he was providing for his son and was settled in a happy relationship with fiancée Charlotte Riley. Now noted for his transformations, it seemed that our home-grown success was about to transform into a star of global proportions.

‘
I
’ve got to earn my pipe and slippers and cardigan. The zenith of my attainment would be to be in a rom com and actually be passable.’ The irony of this comment that Tom Hardy made to Jonathan Ross on his BBC1 chat show in 2010 lay in that, just weeks later, it would be announced that he was to star alongside Reese Witherspoon and Chris Pine in
This Means War
, a romantic comedy. While Tom’s performance in the film may have been perfectly passable, unfortunately the film itself was far from it – in fact the premise and direction of the movie seemed to squander the considerable talent of those who starred in it.

Tom Hardy had been busily carving out a niche for himself as the best of baddies, but he was also trying to make a name for himself as a headline star – so the choice to act alongside one of Hollywood’s hottest leading females in a film directed by the man behind
Charlie’s Angels,
McG, seemed like a
sensible step in the right direction. Tom’s comedy roles on celluloid had been few and far between but he’d often brought humour to his more formidable roles in an attempt to present his characters as more complete and relatable.

Hardy fans would have had mixed feelings about the news that he was to star in
This Means War
. While it would be great to see him do something that, for him, went against the grain, everyone fervently hoped that it would turn out to be a film that showcased his diverse skill in a positive way. It would also be refreshing to see Tom looking his natural, handsome self as opposed to taking on the guise of a hard man.

This Means War
is part action movie and part romantic comedy. In fact, at times, it doesn’t seem to really know which genre it wants to fall into. The rather clunky and implausible story involves two best-buddy secret agents (Tom Hardy as Tuck and Chris Pine as FDR – yes, he is known by initials rather than by name) who happen to fall for the same woman – Lauren Scott, played by Reese Witherspoon. When they discover that she is the object of both of their affections, they try to outsmart each other in order to win her over. Being spies, they have a whole arsenal of tricks up their sleeves, which they utilise in an effort to gain the upper hand over the other. They end up spying on Lauren – and on each other when with her – which led many who saw the film to question its morally dubious storyline. It was certainly a bit of a questionable direction in which to take the story. One scene in particular which was commented upon is when Lauren is dancing around her apartment scantily clad, unaware that the two spies have broken in and are darting around planting secret cameras and bugs. The scene is played out for laughs in
a comical, farcical style, but there is something decidedly offkey about it.

All of this monkeying about is building up, of course, to Lauren having to decide which man she wants to have a relationship with – which leads to another problem. Would this woman really have a quandary? Faced with the muscular, gorgeous Tom Hardy and the loaf-haired, wiry Chris Pine, in reality would there really have been a choice to make? Perhaps if the leading men had been more evenly matched we might have believed she was torn between them. There was also criticism of the way in which the film veered off into giving copious amounts of screen time to the ‘bromance’ between Tuck and FDR.

Director McG had admired Reese Witherspoon’s work for a long time and knew that he would love to have her as his leading lady. She had just finished filming
Water for Elephants
when she got the call from Fox, telling her about his new project. She had admired McG’s
Charlie’s Angels
and was keen to know more about the film. When she read the script, she was attracted to the fact that it was a fun action movie and therefore something new for her to try her hand at. McG was clear from the outset that he wanted to present a different kind of Reese Witherspoon in this movie. Her usual characters are wide-eyed, sweet, girl-next-door types but McG wanted the world to see her sexier side. Recounting what he said to her at the time to
USA Today
, he said, ‘I told her, “You’re America’s sweetheart. Women love you. Men like you. I want men to covet you.”’

Having secured Witherspoon, McG set about finding his two leading men, who would need to be handsome and sexy
enough to attract female cinema-goers to the film. He was clear about the kind of dynamic he wanted his leading men to have, too; it was to be a classic buddy-style partnership in the same vein as Butch and Sundance or Maverick and Goose from
Top Gun.
He also knew he wanted a blend of the classic American CIA agent (think Ethan Hunt in
Mission Impossible
or Jason Bourne) and the archetypal ice-cool British spy such as James Bond.

McG’s meeting with Chris Pine took place at LA’s A-list hangout of choice Chateau Marmont. Pine had thus far been best known for his role as the young Captain Kirk in the rebooted
Star Trek
movie of 2009. In Pine, the director knew that he had found an actor with the right qualities for his FDR: he needed to be supremely confident but ultimately likeable too, assets he’d shown he possessed in abundance when he played Captain Kirk. Speaking to website
Movieclips.com
, McG said of the actor: ‘By his own admission, he does everything in a sort of decidedly self-assured way. The ability to do it with such self-assuredness and still be charming, that’s a real gift; most people can’t do it. Chris Pine, he’s a young actor who has that rare skill set.’ Witherspoon echoed these sentiments, describing Pine as having ‘a Cary-Grant-type quality, sort of effortlessly charming’.

Onwards McG went with the search to find Pine’s British counterpart, someone who would be contrasting yet complementary. Though Tom has legions of fans who consider him to be the sexiest man on the planet, he doesn’t quite fit the Hollywood mould for a leading man. Handsome, yes, but in a rather un-American way – and there was still the age-old wonky teeth dilemma. But McG knew that Tom had
what he was looking for as the flipside to the all-American Pine. ‘He was the only choice for Tuck,’ he later confirmed. The director travelled to London to speak to Tom about the part and to show him some initial scenes. He knew that Tom’s catalogue of past work was quite different from what he was proposing, but felt he’d found his ruggedly charming man. ‘The guy’s a monster. We know what he can do with his acting… he looks like the love child of Marlon Brando and Paul Newman,’ McG said to
USA Today.

Tom was fascinated with the nature of the film and the fact that it seemed to mix up traditional genres. ‘I really like to play against the fact that we’re doing a spy movie in a rom-com,’ he commented. Plus, starring opposite Reese Witherspoon was bound to be an attractive prospect for a young male actor. ‘It was awesome to work with Reese as she is clearly the queen of the genre – she was really the draw,’ he told the
Sunday Mirror
. In turn, Witherspoon was pleased to have Tom as part of the team as he brought his usual staunch work ethic along to the set with him: ‘Tom is a very intense, focused actor. His mind races with thoughts and ideas. He was writing his own lines and helping us construct narrative. He’s smart – always adding to the process,’ she commented generously.

The final piece of the casting jigsaw was to find the right woman to play Witherspoon’s character’s best friend, Trish. Trish is smart, wisecracking and her circumstances are very different from Lauren’s. She is married with kids and so delights in living vicariously through Lauren’s love life. Lauren often turns to her for advice, which she willingly dishes out – and it’s often quite terrible counsel! Witherspoon was desperate for Chelsea Handler to fill the role of Trish. As
well as being an actress, Handler is a comedienne and writer but best known for presenting her own talk show,
Chelsea Lately
. Witherspoon knew that Handler would bring just the right kind of caustic ballsiness the role required. Handler was a perfect fit but the two actresses were, by their own admission, polar opposites in their approach to work. Witherspoon is the consummate professional, always coming to work prepared, whereas Handler had a rather more
off-the-cuff
approach to things. Handler would often ad lib in her scenes and make up jokes, causing Witherspoon to have to fight back laughter when filming. Witherspoon has referred to Handler as ‘uncontrollable and a genius’ and the pair clearly had a lot of fun when on set together.

Chris Pine reported that the wisecracking banter between the two women was often in evidence, but that because he and Tom were rarely involved in the same scenes as them, they would usually miss out on the jokes. The following day, though, the boys would get to see what had transpired on set when watching the scenes played back and were astonished and entertained by what had been going on. ‘It was inevitable that Tom and I would come to set, and Reese and [Chelsea] would have shot a scene the day before and everybody was talking about what they’d shot yesterday. We’d watch playback and from poltergeist [jokes] to urethra [jokes]. It was just incredible,’ he told
USA Today.

Hilarious though Handler’s improvising was, some of her jokes were deemed a bit too near to the knuckle for the censors. Fox was anxious to get a PG-13 rating for the film in the USA so that it would reach as wide a demographic as possible. In order to do this, some of her racier sexual jokes
had to be removed. The film had originally been given an R rating but, deeming this too restrictive, the studio appealed to the board of censors to lower it. When the appeal was turned down, they made the cuts to ensure they succeeded in getting the film rated as a PG-13. The bawdy jokes stayed in for British cinema-goers, though!

Fun on set was by no means just the preserve of the two women. All those involved seemed to have a great time during the course of shooting. Although Tom and Reese Witherspoon hadn’t worked together before, they broke the ice on their first day in a rather unconventional manner. The first scene they had to film involved Lauren shooting Tuck in the crotch with a paintball gun. Ouch. ‘I just thought she’s sexy. But paintball in the nuts hurts,’ joked Tom.

The pair also had a lot of fun filming the scene in which Tuck takes Lauren on a date and arranges for them to swing on a circus trapeze. Apparently Tom dedicated a lot of time to perfecting his trapeze skills so that it looked effortless when doing it for the cameras. ‘He practised for at least a month ahead of time,’ revealed Witherspoon to Front Row Features. ‘He rehearsed a lot, and he’d wake up super early in the morning. He had a trapeze installed in his hotel room. He did a great job. We’re very proud of him.’

Reese has also made no secret of the fact that turning up to work on
This Means War
was by no means a chore. She loved the fact that she was getting to work on an action movie for the first time and delighted in learning how to use weapons – she even begged McG to write in more situations where she could use them. Having two good-looking and charming leading men also had its upside for the actress. ‘I had such a
great time making that movie. It was interesting to get to fire guns! It was a lot of fun making out with two very handsome guys like Chris and Tom, a girl couldn’t ask for more than that,’ she explained to
GT
magazine.

Pine’s experience was equally positive and he said the film was ‘a blast to shoot’. He was also in awe of how Reese threw herself wholeheartedly into the action part of the movie, stating: ‘I have pictures of Reese suspended in mid-air on a studio backlot.’ As for the ‘bromance’ between Chris Pine and Tom Hardy, did it extend behind the scenes? Tom clearly has a lot of respect for his co-star, saying ‘he’s hot as hell and really lovely. He’s a very funny guy so the banter with him was fun.’

According to Reese Witherspoon, the cast was kept in the dark as to the ending of the film. As the conclusion would be such a crucial part of the film, it was essential that no information about which agent Lauren would choose – if indeed she did choose one of them – leaked out in advance. In order to prevent this from happening, the studio opted to play it safe and shoot a variety of endings for the film. ‘We shot endings where I could end up with Tom, or I could end up with Chris, or I could end up alone. Or I could end up with Chelsea Handler,’ she joked to
Total Film
magazine.

For a change
This Means War
didn’t require a huge physical transformation for Tom. Having really piled on the muscle for
Warrior
, he’d actively been trying to lose some of the bulk since the film had wrapped. Now, he needed to put a little bit more back on so that he looked like a strong, fit spy. His preparation, then, wasn’t too demanding and, according to the actor, involved eating quite a bit of cake and other sugary foods. Chris Pine decided that to play FDR, whom he saw as
a ‘hedonist’, he would need to stop lifting weights so he too lost quite a bit of his muscle mass.

The US release date for the film had been slated as 17 February 2012, but Twentieth Century Fox made the decision to pull it forward in the schedule and try to hang publicity on the peg of Valentine’s Day. The president of Fox Distribution, Bruce Snyder, issued a forthright statement about the change, declaring: ‘Starting Valentine’s Day, we’re making war, not love. We’re armed and ready with the perfect movie. This is a picture that has it all – humor, charm, wit and action – and it plays through the roof.’

If using cinema-goers’ and critics’ reactions to the film as a yardstick, the studio’s apparent confidence in their movie could be construed as a bit misplaced. Many felt that the plot of
This Means War
was just a stretch too far and that it had failed to maximise the talent its cast had to offer. In particular, many singled out their disappointment that a powerhouse actor such as Tom had found his way into what they considered to be a below-par film.
Newsday
summed up matters quite neatly when it referred to
This Means War
as ‘less than the sum of its parts’ and went on to express a hope that Tom Hardy had a twin and it was he who had in fact played Tuck, as ‘the guy in this alleged comedy has drunk the Hollywood Kool-Aid’.