Tom Hardy is a beast who never stops training, co-star says
By Ben Baker and Charlotte McLaughlin, PA
Tom Hardy has been called a “beast” who never stops working and training by his co-star Sunny Pang.
The British actor, 47, who has an Oscar nod for survival movie The Revenant, recently released the crime series MobLand with Pierce Brosnan and Dame Helen Mirren.
He has returned to further action movies with Netflix film Havoc, about a drug deal gone wrong, directed by The Raid director Gareth Evans, after being in the Marvel Venom films over the past decade.
On the red carpet for Havoc’s premiere on Tuesday at London’s BFI Imax, Pang told the PA news agency: “Tom Hardy is a beast. I’m telling you, he is a beast. He works so hard.
“We know right after set, he went to training, never stopped. Look at this guy. Man, what the hell he (doesn’t) feel tired at all. So I’m really impressed by his performance.”
Evans said Hardy’s “strengths are deep dive character building work”, which allowed them “to fuse our styles together”, giving the film strong action scenes, and the “heart underneath”.
“The performance he gives is electrifying in this, he’s such a charismatic performer,” he added.
Evans said his movies usually draw on the styles of martial artists Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan, but “this one is much more about gunplay”.
“This is much more of a throwback to my influences from the Hong Kong (sharp-shooting heroic) bloodshed genre,” he added.
The movie also co-stars Deadwood and Santa Clarita Diet actor Timothy Olyphant, as well as Oscar-winning The Last King Of Scotland actor Forest Whitaker.
Netflix says the movie is about “when a drug heist swerves lethally out of control, a jaded cop fights his way through a corrupt city’s criminal underworld to save a politician’s son”.
Hardy plays the disillusioned detective, in the movie coming out on Netflix on April 25th.