Tom Hardy adapts to life as Mad Max
It's a great thing when an actor turns out to be a chameleon, when an actor you've seen, maybe many times before, shows up in a film and you don't realize it's him. British actor Tom Hardy is a chameleon. His earliest credit is for a couple of episodes of the TV miniseries "Band of Brothers," but he first caught moviegoers' notices as the soft-spoken but dangerous Handsome Bob in "RocknRolla." He later pulled off an almost one-man tour de force starring in "Bronson," was sly and funny in "Inception," put on a mask and had his voice electronically altered as the fearsome Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises," and actually did pull a film-length solo shot as a nighttime driver in "Locke." This time out, he's got the title role - though he shares equal screentime with Charlize Theron - in the post-apocalyptic epic "Mad Max: Fury Road." He plays Max Rockatansky, a role created three and a half decades ago by Mel Gibson. Hardy, 37, spoke in Hollywood about the challenges of taking on the iconic part and of making the challenging film.
Q: Max seems to be a very broken man. What are your thoughts about him as a character?
A: Well, I think he's supposed to be broken, in many ways. We start off with Max in a hermetic sort of lifestyle in the beginning of the film, trying to be left alone, and then we see him open up throughout the movie, and connect with humanity around him, and then be broken again and be sent off into the wasteland. I'm not quite sure where this part of the apocalyptic Mad Max world fits into the trilogy prior to it. But it came from a succession of conversations about the mythology, from George Miller's mind.
Q: Did you have any second thoughts about taking over a role that Mel Gibson made so famous?
A: Initially I was daunted because obviously Mad Max is synonymous with Mel Gibson. At the same time I was really excited to get the job because this was such a big fish to land for me. The seesaw effect or the other side of that was that everybody loves Mel as Max, and nobody's gonna want me, at all. So it was like being the new boy at school, and you're immediately set up in some way for failure. But having said that, George, in much the same way that I believe he created the car chase movie, also created the post-apocalyptic movie, almost 40 years ago. So there was no real pressure to try and fill in anybody's shoes, or to be a new Mad Max of any sort. Actually that I was inheriting a legacy; I had been chosen by George to transmute his vision and his character into today's foray into the Mad Max world. That mythology is being further pursued by George and he'd asked me to come along and portray his Max. It was really a question of doing what was asked of me. So I don't know if I brought anything new, as such. I'm just the new actor in the fourth installment of the legacy that was once ultimately Mel's role, and still is, rightly so. I'm just the new boy and hopefully will be accepted.
Q: There's a segment near the beginning where you're captured and strapped to the front of a speeding car. Were you really on the front of that car?
A: I was strapped to the front of the car for a couple of weeks, but my stunt double was stuck to it for about six weeks, doing 60 kilometers an hour.
Q: It's a film full of insane stunts. What was the scariest one for you?
A: I'm not very good with heights, so the scenes with the [30-foot] scaffolding pole were a bit of a mouthful. After we shot in Africa, we had to go back for reshoots in Australia. They set us up in a car park, which was the only place that I remember seeing green screen in the film. I remember thinking, "I really don't want to go up the scaffolding pole." But I went up in a cherry picker, and was strapped on to my own private scaffolding pole. I was way up there, and it was quite lonely. Because when the pole goes one way, you naturally fall that way, as well. And when it comes back up to the middle, you have to roll around and fall the other way. Otherwise your face mallets the side of the pole, and that really hurts, and there's no one up there to complain to, and you're sort of drifting to the camera and away again. So that was fun!
Ed Symkus covers movies for More Content Now.