ONTD

          Actor Tom Hardy likes to be 'other people, not me'           

CANNES, France – We're not hearing a lot from Tom Hardy these days. As Tommy Conlon in 2011's Warrior, he was a man of more punches than words. In extended clips released from the much-anticipated The Dark Knight Rises, Hardy, as the villain Bane, speaks through a mouth-muzzling mask. In the Prohibition-era drama Lawless, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Hardy takes on strong, silent bootlegger Forrest Bondurant.

"These characters are difficult to play because I have a very busy head," Hardy says. "I have inside voices that I have learned to contain."

Fortunately for Hardy, 34, there are many others eager to speak for him. At the Cannes news conference after the movie, Hardy earned comparisons to Marlon Brando because of his ability to lose himself in his characters.

"I hate to use the word 'Brando,' but he has more excitement on-screen than any new actors in the last 10 years," says Guy Pearce, who faces off against Hardy as a corrupt special agent in Lawless. "There's this body and weight of a boxer, and yet the sensitivity of a butterfly surgeon. It's incredible to watch."

In Lawless, Hardy plays one of three brothers (alongside Shia LaBeouf and Jason Clarke) in a Franklin County, Va., bootlegging gang. The movie is based on the historical novel The Wettest County in the World. Hardy — who was bulking up to play Bane when he shot the movie — was much larger than the book's Bondurant, a survivor of the Spanish flu.

But he captured Bondurant's measured silence ("he'll speak when he must," Hardy says), his explosive violence and the subtle emotional whirlwind that takes place when the beautiful Maggie (Jessica Chastain) enters his world. "He's genuinely the 45-year-old virgin who then has these affections," Hardy says. "It throws his entire life in disarray."

For Hardy, things couldn't be more sorted out professionally. Besides Lawless (opening in September in the USA) and The Dark Knight Rises (July 20), he's about to begin work as Max in Mad Max: Fury Road. That explains the extensive beard he strokes as he's talking. "There are not a lot of razors out there in that world," he says. "I'm at least going to show up on set with a beard and say (to director George Miller), 'Do you want me to shave this?' I've been in the post-apocalyptic thinking for the past six months."

He also has a slate of future projects, including an Al Capone biopic. "It's an incredible harvest of work," he says. "I'm incredibly lucky."

The upswing has its downsides. Hardy does not love the PR game. "I hate publicists and publicity," he scoffs. "But I love the people." And he would much rather be working than walking a glitzy red carpet.

"I like to be other people, not me," he says. "And when you're on the red carpet, it's like, 'Here's Tom Hardy.' I don't want to be me. That's why I play other people."

But at the Lawless world premiere in Cannes, with his parents and fiancée Charlotte Riley at his side, Hardy had a revelation. "It hit me. This is what movie stars do — what Shia and these guys do. I felt like a guilty perpetrator because I realized I am also here. So it made me think I must be an actor being celebrated for a hot minute. But it will be gone tomorrow. "Anyway, moving on," he adds. "I'll get on with the work."

CANNES, France — The allure of movie stardom is becoming evident to Tom Hardy.

As he made his way down the glittering red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of his Prohibition-era gangster film “Lawless,” Hardy found himself enjoying the extravagance — briefly, anyway.

“I saw what it meant to be a movie star for a second and I quite liked it,” Hardy said in an interview at the French Riviera festival. “Then I went, ‘Nah! Let’s go back to work.’”

Hardy, who plays a grunting, cardigan-wearing Virginia bootlegger in the film, says he could see the addictiveness of such glamor and acknowledges more is likely on the way. He stars as the villain Bane in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming, eagerly anticipated Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises.”

“I like shiny things, but all that glitters isn’t gold,” says Hardy.” There’s nothing that comes without cost. I’ve got enough cost in my life. I’ve got enough risk going on. I’m already crazy enough.”

The 34-year-old British actor has already known similar pitfalls, having dealt with alcoholism and drug addiction in his 20s. But Hardy’s burgeoning fame has come in tandem with a growing awareness of his considerable talent.

With a visceral masculine intensity that’s drawn comparisons to Marlon Brando, Hardy has played an anguished mixed martial arts fighter in “Warrior,” a double-crossed spy in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and an identity forger in “Inception.” A boiling rage often seems just below the surface of his characters.

Following years on the stage and on TV in Britain, Hardy’s highest-profile roles are ahead of him. Aside from “The Dark Knight Rises,” he’ll star in a new version of “Mad Max,” for which he’s currently sporting a bushy beard. In “Lawless,” which will be released in September, Hardy’s performance stands out from an ensemble of Shia LaBeouf, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce and Gary Oldman.

His character — the mumbling, nearly inaudible Forrest Bondurant — is the middle of three backwoods brothers trying to protect their bootlegging business from a sadistic lawman (Pearce) from Chicago. Hardy modeled the character partly on Tom Berenger’s gruff Sgt. Barnes from “Platoon,” whom he calls his favorite villain.

“I’d love to have made a silhouette of Forrest,” says Hardy. “I didn’t want it to be any tough guy, I wanted it to be a silhouette, like (the violent “Oliver Twist” character) Bill Sykes.

As Forrest, Hardy cuts a striking figure. Dusty and rumbled, he’s almost glacially poised, except when he uncoils ruthlessly into violence. But he also has a more docile side, which Hardy says his character’s cardigan sweater symbolizes.

The actor speaks passionately about the detailed piecing together of a character, assembling the gestures, manner and wardrobe.

“You sit and you dwell and you wait and you read and you think and you meditate,” he says of his process. “It takes time to think and ponder, and the work is never done because it just continues. It’s looking for evidence of things.”

LaBeouf calls him “hyper-specific” with mime-like abilities of replicating behavior gleaned from movie characters or people.

“He doesn’t have five ways of playing it,” says LaBeouf. “There’s one right way and he does that until the camera fits him. He shows up perfect.”

“Lawless” director John Hillcoat (”The Road”) says Forrest was a character Hardy was “itching to play.”

“He’s part of a new wave of acting talent — including Michael Fassbender and Ryan Gosling — and Tom’s very much a part of that kind of real rigorous and inspiring acting,” says Hillcoat.

Hardy, who has a son from a previous relationship, is engaged to actress Charlotte Riley. (He referred to her as his wife, which would be his second marriage.) But as one of the most sought-after young actors in Hollywood, another night of parties in Cannes holds obvious dangers of excess for Hardy. Pearce, on parting with him, gently advises him to “try not to get killed.”

But however uninhibited Hardy lives, it’s clear acting brings an orderliness for him.

“When I’m working, I have this discipline and I get meaning from it,” says Hardy. “It gives me purpose. And then I can turn to my little boy and say, ‘Daddy does something. And I do it well. I may not be the best, but I’m the best that I can be. Now eat your f------ greens.’

For the past couple of months, Tom Hardy has been sporting a particularly luxuriant beard, as part of his prep for Mad Max: Fury Road. And it looks like he might not be touching a Mach 3 for a good while longer. Empire got the chance to speak with Hardy and his Lawless co-star Guy Pearce in Cannes, where the former admitted that the long-delayed project still has no set start date.

“We keep moving that around, you know?” he shrugs. “Who knows when it’ll come out? I’ve been on stand-by for two years… but it’s all part of it. It’s kind of the cool thing to do, to be elusive with dates and all that.”

While there has been talk of the Mad Max shoot being so ambitious that it will last an entire year, rumour has it that the schedule has been cut down to trim the budget.

Says Hardy, not entirely seriously: “It was going to be a year of filming, then six months, and now we’re supposed to be doing it in six days. It’s a musical – we’re going to go around shopping centres in a little wagon and sing songs. People were expecting big, but we’re going to give them small. It’ll be a live, free-running musical and it’s coming to a place near you soon.”

And finally, answering the burning question of why Pearce has no eyebrows in Lawless, Hardy points at his beard: “I have his hair. I’m holding onto it.” Pearce laughs. “It’s true, Tom’s got it. He’s stuck it on his face.”

The Hollywood Reporter got a behind-the-scenes look as Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain and more of the cast of John Hillcoat's new film prepared for their premiere. The cast posed for photos in their red carpet best at the Martinez hotel.