Tom Hardy -my madness

OK,I see that not so many people go here.....our forum is a absolutely quiet place )) it's great!
I confess I'm absolutely taken with this man!!!AAAAAAA!I love you,Tom!!!!
















DO YOU ASK ME IF I AM MAD?YES!!!!!I AM!

So....I'm going on

frankly speaking he is not particularly my type, but it is a good thing in a way actually, if all of us liked the same guy all at the same time, there will be a nasty never ending cat-fight breaking out

TOM HARDY - HOLLYWOOD’S LAST BAD BOY

He is known for his roles in “Bronson”, “Inception”, “Star Trek Nemesis”, “Warrior”, “RocknRolla” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”. He will portray the primary villain Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises” which is the final film in the Christopher Nolan's saga and is set for release in 2012. Yes. It’s Tom Hardy.

EARLY YEARS

Tom Hardy (15 September 1977) was born in Hammersmith and brought up in East Sheen, London. His mother, Elizabeth Anne is an artist and painter whose family was Irish Catholic. His father, Edward “Chips” Hardy is an advertisement and comedy writer. Hardy studied at two private schools, Reed’s School and Tower House School, then at Richmond Drama School and subsequently at the Drama Centre London.

As an only child to a writer father, Edward, and an artist mother, Anne, Hardy won a modeling competition when he was 19, but he spent his teens and early twenties battling delinquency, alcoholism and drug addiction. He entered a rehab clinic and has been sober and clean since 2003.

Hardy married Sarah Ward in 1999, they divorced in 2004. He has a son, Louis Thomas Hardy (born 8 April 2008), with ex-girlfriend Rachael Speed. In an interview with Now magazine, Hardy says that he has “played with everything and everyone” but now that he is in his thirties he is done experimenting. In July 2010, Hardy proposed to actress Charlotte Riley after a year of dating.



He began his career in war dramas, winning the part of United States Army Private John Janovec in the award-winning HBO and BBC miniseries “Band of Brothers”. He made his feature film debut in Ridley Scott’s 2001 war thriller “Black Hawk Down”.

Hardy appeared in the independent film “Dot the I”, sharing the bill with Gael García Bernal in 2003. He then travelled to North Africa for “Simon: An English Legionnaire”, a story of the French Foreign Legion. In the same year, he gained some heavy international exposure as the Reman Praetor Shinzon, a clone of USS Enterprise Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) in “Star Trek Nemesis”. He returned to England to feature in the 2003 thriller “LD 50 Lethal Dose”.

He was awarded the 2003 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for “Outstanding Newcomer”. Hardy was also nominated for a 2004 Laurence Olivier Award for “Most Promising Newcomer of 2003” in a Society of London Theatre Affiliate.

Hardy appeared in the 2005 BBC miniseries “The Virgin Queen” as Robert Dudley, a childhood friend of Elizabeth I.

The miniseries portrays them as having a platonic, though highly romantic, affair throughout her reign over England during the 16th century. Hardy featured in the Richard Fell adaptation of the 1960s sci-fi series “A for Andromeda”, on BBC Four.

In 2007, he appeared in the BBC Two drama based on a true story, “Stuart: A Life Backwards”. He played the lead role of Stuart Shorter, a homeless man who had been subjected to years of abuse and whose death was possibly suicide. In September 2008, he appeared in director Guy Ritchie’s London gangster film, “RocknRolla”. He played the role of gay gangster Handsome Bob, one of the members of the criminal gang the Wild Bunch, led by One Two (Gerard Butler), on whom Bob has a crush. Hardy will reprise the role in Ritchie’s sequel “The Real RocknRolla”.

In June 2010, Hardy announced on “Friday Night” with Jonathan Ross that he will play the title role in a new version of “Mad Max”. Hardy replaced Michael Fassbender in the 2011 adaptation of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, also featuring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth, the second film by director Tomas Alfredson.

One of the most anticipated movies of 2012 is Christopher Nolan’s third and final Batman installment, “The Dark Knight Rises.” Tom Hardy plays the villain, Bane. Hardy was a logical choice for Nolan, word online has it: he’s already worked with the director on the critically acclaimed “Inception” and he can play a very convincing bad guy, winning over critics with his role in “Bronson.”

“He’s brutal, brutal. He’s expedient delivery of brutality. He’s a big dude who’s incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a resultbased and orientated fighting style. The result is clear,” the actor explains.

Fight scenes will be presented in accordance with such an extraordinary villain, Hardy goes on to say: because Bane is physical, violence will be exacerbated.

“The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it’s nasty. Anything from small joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. It’s anything he can get away with,” he explains.

“If we’re going to shoot somebody, shoot the pregnant woman or the old lady first. Make sure everybody stands up. And listens,” says the actor. “He is a terrorist in his mentality as well as brutal action. So he’s horrible. A really horrible piece of work. It’s not about fighting. It’s just about carnage with Bane. He’s a smashing machine. He’s a wrecking ball,” Hardy adds. “The Dark Knight Rises” is out in theaters in the summer of 2012.

SOURCE http://www.fashionxy.com/?part=News&key=tom-hardy---hollywood%E2%80%99s-last-bad-boy&id=260

Why the best actors are British

'There's something even more important than Shakespeare, subsidised theatre and our love of ceremonial'




Why are there so many great British theatre actors? I have a few theories. First, Shakespeare is the DNA of our theatre and we have a living relationship to his work – it's not just part of heritage Britain. Thanks to Shakespeare, British actors tend to have a sense of history as well as great verbal dexterity and literacy.

And then so many of the characteristics of theatre coincide with the features of our nation: dressing up, processions, ceremonies and social rituals. Adversarial conflict is the stuff of our parliamentary and legal system, and theatre depends on it. British actors, like British politicians, are entirely pragmatic, with a genius for adapting to all conditions and resources. And theatre is concerned with role-playing, which is second nature to a nation obsessed with class distinction and inured to the necessity of pretending to be what you aren't.

Third, our publicly funded not-for-profit theatre has nurtured our great actors. There was an eruption of creative talents in the 60s – writers, actors, directors and designers – which has continued, supported by public subsidy. The index of the success of our theatre has been quality rather than profit, and the National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Court, regional and fringe theatres have enriched the commercial theatre – in all senses.

But. We produce great actors because we're repressed as a nation. We're introverted and need to be licensed to express ourselves publicly. People say that all changed with Diana, but I think her death just proves my point: it gave us licence to show emotion in public.

All actors crave approval, but however fine an actor's characterisation, you don't make the distinction between approving the performance and approving the actor. In applauding a performance, you bestow love not on the fictional character, but on the actor. "Scratch an actor," Laurence Olivier said, "and you find an actor."

He should have known, but I don't think it's true, or any more true of actors than it is of politicians, priests, teachers, strippers or anyone else engaged in acts of public self-display. What is true, I think, is that if you scratch an actor, you'll find a child. Not that actors are inherently less mature than politicians, priests, etc, but an actor must retain a child's appetite for mimicry, for demanding attention and, above all, for playing.

There are some directors who simply don't like actors. They tend not to work in the theatre. In film, it's different. It's possible to direct a film and hardly speak to the actors. I find that incomprehensible. I admire good actors not only because they do something I'm not capable of, but because the best do it apparently effortlessly.

There is a common myth that actors are all extroverts, but many of the best are rather shy and not especially articulate. I've worked with many of the actors photographed here and they're all undemonstrative people. Judi Dench is the paradigm. She's a bright, warm, witty, reserved woman who doesn't show off publicly or privately. She has an intense empathy with everyone she meets. One of the things that makes a good actor is the ability to imagine what other people are feeling. It's a rare quality – the ability to forget yourself and identify with another person. It's hard to avoid making Judi sound like Maria von Trapp – full of sober virtues – but to suggest this would be to conceal the side of her personality that's in some ways the essence of her: her love of betting, of raucous company, her impish sense of humour.

I've just finished shooting Henry IV with Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff. He's probably the cleverest actor I've worked with. What's rare is to be able to shed that cleverness when you act. You never feel that his internal commentator is visible. The last thing you want is someone showing off their intelligence, commenting on a performance as they're performing it. Simon's a brilliant musician, and as an actor he has perfect pitch – his timing, rhythm and physical coordination have a musical fluency. He's a phenomenon.

A few years ago, I worked with Vinette Robinson when she played Antigone. She's strikingly attractive, articulate and lively without being flamboyant. I've never met Bertie Carvel, but I've seen him in Matilda. His Miss Trunchbull is a marvellous creation. He makes it possible to look at a man playing a woman and believe in his femininity, however grotesque. It's wonderful how a theatre audience can willingly join the conspiracy. Theatre, like religion, can make us believe in the unbelievable.

I worked with Daniel Kaluuya on a short film, I think soon after he left school. He absolutely fits my repression theory, because he's shy and modest but funny and eloquent. He writes well, too.

One of Anne-Marie Duff's first jobs was a small part in an Eduardo de Filippo play I directed at the NT. She later played Cordelia when I directed King Lear. I've always been impressed by how precise and conscientious she is, and how open and guileless. She's strong but vulnerable, with a beautiful and very expressive face. Often, beautiful people on stage seem plain because their beauty isn't animated by talent. In Judi and Anne-Marie, you see the opposite: neither is conventionally beautiful, but on stage they're ravishing.

At his best, Mark Rylance is in a constellation of his own – as he was in Jerusalem. He's singular and unclubby, an exceptional, idiosyncratic actor who feels more like a creature of the late 60s, from a culture that seems at odds with the 21st century.

Eileen Atkins is a Zen actress, everything distilled to its essence: never a wasted gesture. She is fiercely intelligent, and at times intelligently fierce, but a good and forgiving friend.

Patrick Stewart is where my theory of repression falls apart. He doesn't hold back in public or private. He's a wonderful advertisement for the export of character actors from the British subsidised theatre. He was the backbone of the RSC for years before he got into orbit with Star Trek.

The best actors are usually the best company. If you told me, "You're going to have an evening out with everyone in these pictures", I'd think, thanks, I'm going to have a matchlessly good night.



SOURCE http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/mar/23/why-best-actors-are-british

By Dean Piper
Comments
8 Jan 2012 00:01

Tough guy Batman star Tom Hardy says: "I want an allotment"

Tom Hardy is without a shadow of a doubt THE actor to watch out for in 2012.

The Bronson and Inception star is already setting the showbiz world alight with his portrayal of Bane in Batman The Dark Knight Rises... and the flick isn’t even out until July.

I caught up with the star – who’s notoriously quirky, but always ­gracious with it – at this week’s Iron Lady after-show party to talk ­Batman, his ­upcoming role playing Al ­Capone and why he’s ­desperate to own... an ­ALLOTMENT.

“Batman is such an amazing ­franchise that I honestly feel ­overwhelmingly privileged to be a part of it,” he said over a ­cocktail with his fiancée actress Charlotte Riley, who he met on the set of 2009’s Wuthering Heights.

“It’s such an amazing cast to work alongside, they are all so ­talented. I loved being able to play a baddie and, coming from East Sheen in South-West London, that doesn’t come easily to me. I actually had to work on not being very nice. I’m genuinely a nice guy.
“I’m not even thinking about how it’s ­going to blow up for me after Batman. I’m just going to ­enjoy it and I’m still going to be buying a pint of milk by ­myself at the corner shop.”

Rather than ­dreaming of Oscars glory, humble Tom’s mind is on more down to earth ­matters... literally.

“My aim is to get an ­allotment,” the 34-year-old said. “But where I live they are very ­selective about who they give one to, so even when I get to Michael Caine levels of ­acting I may not be able to have one.”

And with a nod to his well- ­publicised bad-boy past, Tom said: “I was so happy to ­finally have a ‘TW’ ­postcode when I got my place in East Sheen, as I always got excited when I heard police ­radioing in that postcode – and there was me ­probably sat in the back of their car!

“And don’t forget it’s where Sir Trevor McDonald is from. That’s enough reason to stay. I would never consider moving.”

Tom has the lead role in the new Mad Max film, which he begins ­shooting in Namibia this April with ­Charlize Theron and A Single Man star Nicholas Hoult.

But his next huge project is to play the ­Depression-era Chicago crime boss Al Capone.

He enthused: “I’m going to be learning Italian for the film. I’ve got 18 months beforehand but I’m not sure how long it’s going to take – the studio are paying for it anyway! I don’t think it will be too difficult, it’s just what you do for the role.

“Saying that, after watching Meryl Streep play Margaret ­Thatcher I’m now sh***ing myself at my attempt at a biopic, as she blew it out the water.

“How am I meant to live up to that? She truly lived and breathed that role. That was ­definitely ­America 1, UK 0.”

Tom is one of the good guys. World, get ready... he’s about to take over.

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SOURCE http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/tough-guy-batman-star-tom-157613

2008

Simon Gage

Attitude Magazine

TOM BOY

“My favourite subject is always going to be me, I’m afraid.”


As one of the UK’s fastest rising stars, Tom Hardy piqued our interest in 2008 as gay gangster Handsome Bob in Guy Ritchie’s Rocknrolla. Here he tells Simon Gage about Guy, Madonna and dealing with his demons.

“My favourite subject is always going to be me, I’m afraid,” says Tom Hardy, pouring himself a cup of tea at the bar of Beach Blanket Babylon, one of the sparkling new venues opening up East London to the smart set who wouldn’t have been caught dead round these streets a couple of years ago.

He’s wearing a red flannel shirt that’s covering up his famous tattoos (“Laugh now, cry later” on his chest, a tribute to his agent on his arm), and a pair of scruffy jeans. He has about ten boxes of trainers on the stool next to him, a gift from the nice people at Adidas; it’s the only addiction he’ll allow himself these days: trainers. “I’m very selfish,” he goes on, the accent a weird mix of street and suburban, posh and common, peppered with the voices of the people he’s talking about. “It’s all about me. I know it.”

Refreshing to hear a celebrity admit they are an ego maniac, you might be thinking, except that in Tom’s case it’s not true. While most actors/singers/whatevers trot out well-rehearsed lines to get across the exact image they’re trying to create, and never mind who they’re talking to, Tom Hardy, one of the most promising actors of his generation if not THE most promising, actually, you know, talks to you.

He knows your name, asks you questions, eventually takes your phone number and tells you to ring him if you ever fancy a chat. And he lets you in on things most other famouses would probably hide. Like how he has a bit of a sex thing for women’s shoes. “It’s a fetish,” he goes, about three minutes after I meet him. “I love classic , elegant women’s shoes. I find them incredibly sexy. High heels. Not just a stripper shoe but maybe a Louboutin or Jimmy Choo.” When he gets a bigger house, he’s going to start collecting them, while his girlfriend apparently says that when they’re out all he looks at is other women’s shoes and other men’s arms, another strange fixation.

The arm thing, mind you, is probably something to do with the face that he’s one of those actors that fucks with his body to get the part right and so he knows how hard it is to turn a good bicep. To play violent criminal Charles Bronson (the film’s out next year), he put on the best part of three stone only to find out the project had been shelved and instead he would be playing an emaciated homeless man in the BBC’s Stuart: A Life Backwards. When that was finished Bronson was back on, and so he had to get back to bulking.

And that sort of demonstrates the range of the man. From Black Hawk Down and Band of Brothers to The Virgin Queen, from Stuart: A Life Backwards to Sweeney Todd, and from Bill Sykes in the recent TV version of Oliver Twist to a gay gangster in Guy Ritchie’s latest RocknRolla. He’s been described as a character actor in a leading man’s body.

And what a body! Roguishly handsome with his crooked teeth and crinkly eyes, he’s still got a bit of the bulk of Bronson but it’s his charisma – a raw sexual charisma – that really gets you. He has this uncompromising sort of masculine aura (he argues with you about that, reckoning that he’s actually quite feminine) that you don’t usually get with English actors. It’s a Brando quality that starts with the deep voice and the bruiser’s face and continues through to a complete lack of squeamishness about gay stuff (some of which he says he’s tried) that can only come from someone completely at home with their own sexuality.

Add to that his thoughtfulness, an emotional intelligence he’s acquired through the therapy he used to wean him off drink, drugs and violence and plain old-fashioned niceness, and Tom Hardy is something of an all-rounder, with BBC projects starting to take off (he’s writing a comedy series and has just been given some sort of a green light) and teaching gigs at schools he once got thrown out of. It’s a long way to come for the guy who started out winning a TV modeling competition.

So, have you completely messed up your metabolism doing Bronson then?

Yeah, For Stuart: A Life Backwards I lost the weight with a nutritionist then for Bronson I had to put on two and a half stone in a couple of weeks so I just ate a lot of sugar, a lot of pizza and a lot of ice cream. I didn’t have time to do it properly. Bronson’s body’s like a brawler rather than a six-pack or athletic. I couldn’t get my legs up to that standard and my wrists and forearms weren’t thick like his.

You’ve met Charles Bronson. What’s he like as a person?

Brilliant! Really funny. I was scared at first because he’s in a segregated housing unit behind the prison, which is purpose-built for seven life-long prisoners for various degrees of murder and cannibalism. He’s the only one kept there who hasn’t actually killed anyone.

But he’s ultra-violent?

He’s got a name for that but after further analysis there are other men in that world who are much more violent on the street. I spent a lot of with Charles and with his family and friends, who are in the film.

You never felt threatened moving in those circles?

Of course I did! I’d be foolish not to. Once you’re in, you open up a door and the fear is, “Will it close and I’ll be close and I’ll be stuck in there?” I’m not there to be a gangster. I’m an actor. We’re from different worlds. But there’s a code of ethics about that they do, however immoral you think it is. Some of them quite proudly own the badge of bank robber but they’ll still turn up at 8 o’clock on the dot immaculately dressed and if you ask them to do something they’ll get it done. It’s the same as if I was playing a transsexual or a black activist from Swamp Town Mississippi in the 60’s, it’s a different culture, and I’m a tourist.

So, do you go into the visitor’s room…?

There’s no visiting room with Charlie Bronson. Even his probation team is not allowed to be in the same room. You’re talking through a dumb waiter. You can touch him or give him a hug, sort of, but even at 55 he’s considered too dangerous to be in a room with someone, even his mother. It was like putting your hand into a lion’s cage and it was a very soft and gentle hand and I had a feel of his forearm.

Was that a sexy moment?

A sexy moment? It was an exciting moment. It was a moment when I broke through my prejudices. And I can’t speak for the victims of his crimes but my experience with the man is of someone who has consistently surprised me, pulled rugs from underneath me. Make no bones about it. I know this mad is a dangerous man but I would feel comfortable sharing a cell with Charlie. Until we fell out. [Laughs] One time he goes, “Tom, what you going to do about the ‘tache?” And I said, “I don’t think I’m going to go with it, mate.” And he was like, “You what? This is the most notorious moustache in the penal system.” And I said, “Yeah, but it’s a bit Village People, innit, mate?” and he laughed and goes, “Y.M.C.A.” He could have grabbed me any time he liked. But he’s so up for having a laugh.

And what was it like working with Guy Ritchie on RockNRolla?

That’s a whole different type of acting that is. It’s punching the clock acting in many ways. It’s fun. His films are kitsch. I played a character and we didn’t even know if he was gay up till the 11th hour. Gerald [Butler] is going “I think it would be good if he was gay” and I’m like, “Just make a fucking decision. I don’t care if he’s gay or not.” I just wanted to get on with it.

And did you get to meet Madonna while filming with Guy?

Yeah, I was preparing for a scene with Gerard when my character comes out, and I had seen her on set and I wobbled because I get star struck. I did what anybody who can’t deal with the situation does and I went and his in the Range Rover. So I was sort of prepping for the scene in the Range Rover and somebody said hello to me and it was her, she’d somehow managed to get into the back of it! Yeah, and then we had a conversation which I have completely blacked out because there she was like the Mother Mary in the boot of the fucking Range Rover and I was completely star struck and trying to learn my lines.

What did she seem like?

It’s like sitting with a predator. I don’t know whether you’re going to eat me or not. She told me about a book I should really read, whose name completely escapes me, because I was just [aghast] “Madonna’s speaking!”

What does she look like?

Like a ghost, to be honest.

Did you fancy her?

No. She’s just someone’s mum to me. I grew up with her. She’s Madonna!

But she could be a Milf [mother I’d like to fuck, an older woman fetish thing]…

She’s more like a myth than a milf. It just doesn’t seem right. I didn’t see her as a sexual creature. There was a time when I really would have totally gone there but since the Justin Timberlake leaping over cars and things, I just think, “Enough now.” It would be nice to see her do something else now, like an Audrey Hepburn, go and be an Ambassador for the Goodwill somewhere. It kind of spooks me out a bit. But who am I? She’s very cool, very savvy. She’s like a hitman or something. Then she gave Gerald Butler a shot of Vitamin B in the arse in the back of the fucking Range Rover! Gerard Butler’s flabby arse came through the window and she shot it with a jab of B12. Right in his arse! It was a day of surprise after another surprise. Gerard Butler 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!

And your character was gay in the end.

Which was great! It was a very simple story. Guy’s stories are like comic books. It’s the night before I go into prison and they’ve set me up with these beautiful Russian escort girls and there’s drugs and they’re going to see me off properly. I’m miserable and Gerard’s like, what’s the matter with you. And I go “It’s not that I’m unhappy but you wouldn’t understand,” and he goes, “Of course I’ll understand – I’ve known you for years.” I’m just like “I don’t want the fucking girls, I want you. “ And he starts berating the fact that he’s known me for years and had showers with me and that. It actually happened to one of the guys involved in the writing: this villain came out to him.

It’s such a tradition of London gangsters, the gay thing, what with the Krays…..

I wouldn’t like to say. I really wouldn’t. It’s an unsaid, untalked about thing. The military get it as well. Sexual relations where it’s a necessity, like prison, are different from being a homosexual.

Have you ever had sexual relations with men?

As a boy? Of course I have. I’m an actor for fuck’s sake. I’m an artist. I’ve played with anything and anyone. But I’m not into men sexually. I love the form and the physicality but the gay sex bit does nothing for me. In the same way a wet vagina would turn someone else into a lemon-sucking freak. To me it just doesn’t compute to me now that I’m in my 30’s and it doesn’t do it for me and I’m done experimenting.

Have you done it all?

Not all but I can imagine. We’ve all got an arsehole and I can imagine. It just doesn’t do it for me, sex with another man. But there’s plenty of stuff in a relationship with another man, especially gay men, that I need in my life. A lot of gay men get my thing for shoes. I don’t think I’m metrosexual but I’m definitely my mother’s son. I have definite feminine qualities and a lot of gay men are incredibly masculine.

You seem very masculine.

A lot of people say that but I don’t feel it. I feel intrinsically feminine. I went to an insight course at the parachute regiment. I thought, “I want to join up, do three years, go to Iraq, do my bit, get physically fit.” So I went to White City barracks and I realized I had a real phobia about groups of men, I’m frightened of them, I’m much more comfortable around women. I’d love to be one of the boys but I always felt a bit on the outside. Maybe my masculine qualities come from over-compensating that I’m not one of the boys. Anyway, it was fucking horrible, man. I signed up for three years and after forty minutes I had to talk my way out of it. They don’t need people like me, they need someone who’s prepared to go over and kill people.

Have you ever punched somebody out?

Yeah, ruthlessly on many occasions. I wouldn’t do it now but I used to just like fighting. Fighting to win, fighting to lose. I didn’t give a shit. I just liked fighting. I was just an idiot. I was an obnoxious, trouble-making lunatic. Not comfortable in my own skin and displacing that into the world. A complete twat. A knobhead. Mostly because I’m a middle class white boy from suburbia.

Have you changed your accent?

Yeah, because I’m a middle class white suburban white boy and I’m terrified someone might notice and eat me. Growing up I was deeply ashamed, I was like, “I’m not street and I’m not rich.” A classic case of suburban kid. There are a lot of suicides among suburban kids.

Did you ever get near suicide in your head?

God, yeah! I was drinking and drugging and sometimes I was surprised I woke up the next day. Sometimes I had to calm myself into oblivion, thinking tomorrow’s not necessarily going to come but don’t freak out now. Then I’d wake up with the guilt and the shame at the groundhog day of my behavior. Unlucky enough to be able to roll over and see the face of someone I love and wonder what I’d done to them and having to apologise. It’s easier if you think of it as a disease. But many a night I’ve spent in a police cell. You always get a sticky, filthy smelly blanker and someone’s written something on the wall in shit. But I was so young I didn’t really give a fuck. I mean, I was getting arrested between the age of 15 and 21, so it really needed to stop because eventually I was going to do a lengthy sentence. I was looking at 14 years when I was 17, I was looking at 5 years when I was 21 for something else.

What have you done?

Everything from firearms through to drugs, taking and driving away vehicles, taking stuff from vehicles, drunk and disorderly, you know all kinds of shit. But anything I’ve done in the past is all behind me, and I don’t advocate the use of anything or violence. I am actively involved in anti-gun and knife crime messages. All the behavior, like the drinking is behind me. Now, I want to be useful and help people. Help kids in inner cities and guys in prison. I have a company which has an outreach project.

Have you got a partner?

Yeah, Rachel.

The mother of your son?

Yeah [starts showing photos of Rachel and Louis, who he’s obviously obsessed with, on his mobile phone.] We’ve been off and on for three years, me and rascal. We’ve been together since a bit before Louis was born. We’d just split up when she got pregnant. She’s brilliant. He’s brilliant.

Has it changed you as a person, being a dad?

Yeah, it has. Stopping drinking was the first thing. It was a fucking trainwreck. I drank everyone’s share, took everyone’s drugs. I only got off the ride by good fortune. It’s fun to start with but it dies out pretty quick. Now six years on that was a chapter in my life. It’s with me forever, it’s a formative part of my life, I know my limits. I’m six years sober and I don’t want to drink today because I know where it’ll take me if I do.

You’ve said before that you can’t stop the voices in your head………

There’s an inner voice that everyone has. It’s a voice policing my behavior. Before I didn’t bother policing my behavior. Fuck that. I just used to use manipulation. What do I want from you? And what am I going to take from you? Then in an hour I’ll forget about you and move on to the next person I want something from. Self, self, self. My primary relationship was with myself and what I wanted and how I was going to get it but it was all completely unconscious. Alcohol is an illness of innocence because you don’t know you’re ill. You’re in denial. Then you hit bottom, and it’s like that song, “I’ve been down so long, this looks like up to me.” For some people death is the best thing that can happen. For some people the insanity is worse than death. But when you put things into perspective and look at other people it’s quite easy for me to get stuck so far up my own arse that I wonder who’s shitting on me. It’s good for me to get my head out of my arse and look at what other people are going through.

You did therapy and all that?

Yeah, you have to when you enter a programme.

And did you get anything out of it?

Of course I did! I’m fucking here. If you put it in simple terms I had a psychosis and I went around thinking that I had to know everything. I would never put my hand up id I didn’t know. Someone would say, “Tom, do you know how to drive?” and I’d say “Yes. “and we’d crash. And it was like, “Tom, all you had to say was no.” I’ve nicked a load of cars. I was an idiot.

Do you not miss the madness?

I don’t miss the chaos, no. I have silence and peace of mind. The first couple of drinks are nice but it was never an option. If I’m drinking, I’m drinking and I would inevitably do something stupid and not remember of come back a couple of days later. And it didn’t matter who I hurt, I’d come back and grovel and apologise and be pathetic. It’s wretched. A miserable life. I started at 12, 13 and I’ve been sober for six years. But I think about it every day. It never leaves me but it stops being as noisy as it used to be. I’m an old soak in a young man’s body, a drunk in recovery. Drunks are my people. I can spot them. And there’s none more pious than the recently converted.

So why were you drinking and fighting?

I was ashamed of not having any relevance…not being comfortable in my own skin. Huge ego, very low self-esteem. A lot of anger and rage and fear. It would be, “I’m not going to feel frightened so I’ll strangle the biggest guy in the bar and then no one will fuck with me.” I’ll get tattoos and people will know I’m not afraid to hurt myself and they’ll be like warning signs. I was restless as a spirit, nervous, over-stimulated. I was naughty as a child, manipulative, greedy for more love.

You’re in the right job, having people look at you for a living….

Yeah, but I don’t want them to smother me. Come close but back off. When I locked onto acting, it worked I found something I could do. Now I know who I am.

RockNRolla is released on DVD on 26 January and Bronson is currently scheduled for release in February

SOURCE http://www.tomhardyparty.com/%E2%80%9Cmy-favourite-subject-is-always-going-to-be-me-i%E2%80%99m-afraid-%E2%80%9D/