The Stage

Tom Hardy

Published Thursday 25 March 2004 at 12:00

Given his sensual good looks it isn’t surprising Tom Hardy won The Big Breakfast Find Me A Model 1998 competition which landed him a contract with a modelling agency. It did come as a surprise to him, however, that this led to an interview for the lead in a movie.

“The casting director, Gary Davy, saw my picture in Male Vogue and thought I had the right look for the part,” says Tom who was indeed offered the job. But he wanted to finish his degree course at The Drama Centre and decided to turn it down.

Davy applauded his decision but couldn’t resist calling him in a year later for Steven Spielberg’s Band of Brothers. “From the moment I met him I knew how important he was going to be,” said Davy. “I simply knew he was going to be a star”.

Davy’s faith has not been misplaced as the 26-year-old Tom has now notched up several films including The Reckoning and Black Hawk Down directed by Ridley Scott in which he plays Twombly, a young soldier who gets separated from his troop and deafens his best friend (played by Ewen Bremner) by almost shooting him in the head. The two actors provide comic relief in an otherwise deadly serious war movie.

His career so far has been an impressive mixture of stage and screen, the canny planning of which he attributes to his agent Lindy King.

“I don’t know anything,” he says with a broad grin. “But I’ve played a range of different screen and stage characters and it’s all because of Lindy. I’m 100% committed to her.”

This commitment is evident in a large tattoo of her name displayed across his left arm. It seems a serendipitous coincidence that his girlfriend’s name is also Linda!

Tom has been wise to follow his agent’s advice which has steered him towards parts at The Royal Court, The Sheffield Crucible and last year a play at The Hampstead Theatre, In Arabia We’d All Be Kings, in which he played Skank, a 19-year-old American drug addict who works as a rent boy in order to survive.

Tom’s performance won him the Evening Standard Most Outstanding Newcomer Award for 2003 and he was also nominated for an Olivier award for Most Promising Newcomer.

He is currently playing the role of Michael in Festen, a stage version of Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogme film at The Almeida Theatre. It is a disturbing study of family dysfunction and Hardy seems to excel at playing troubled characters.

“I’ve got a lot of experiences to draw on which are very dark and very light,” says Tom. “I really know who these characters are. In fact if I weren’t an actor it would be prison, death or insanity,” he laughs.

Festen runs from March 18 to 25.