Tom Hardy takes a big leap in ‘Venom’
Family was part of decision to play an alien
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – He laughs at the notion, but it’s true: Tom Hardy has gone Hollywood. The well-inked English actor, who rose to fame in raw, brawny movies such as “Bronson” and “Warrior,” has been slowly ascending in major studio films for some time. “The Dark Knight Rises.” “Mad Max: Fury Road.” “The Revenant,” which earned him his first Oscar nomination.
Cut to 2018, and he’s the face of Sony Pictures’ burgeoning Marvel universe, thanks to the comic book adaptation “Venom” (in theaters Friday). “I’m half the face,” Hardy deadpans, his baseball cap recently discarded. He points to Exhibit A: a movie poster 10 feet away in which the actor’s head is half-covered by a terrifying, toothy alien.
In “Venom,” Hardy plays the amorphous, carnivorous parasite who slimes into San Francisco and into the body of an investigative journalist named Eddie Brock (also played by Hardy). The PG-13 film, far darker than its Disney-backed, “Avengers”-style brethren, is more akin to menacing, if wry, films such as “Ghostbusters” and Tim Burton’s “Batman.”
“I’m old now and ugly enough and long enough in the tooth to take on board certain responsibilities and accountabilities and not be swallowed up by something that perhaps I may have feared as a younger actor,” says Hardy, 41, who executive produces.
In short, it was time to take a leap.
And “Venom” is a gamble. The violent character, who haunts Earth feasting on human heads and ripping off limbs, first appeared on the big screen in the
critical bust “Spider-Man 3,” then played by Topher Grace.
And Spider-Man himself, to whom Venom is inextricably linked in Marvel comic books, was “off the table from the start” to appear in “Venom,” Hardy says. (Thanks to a complex Hollywood partnership, Sony has the rights to SpiderMan but effectively loaned the character out to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe for five films – which is why Spidey was in “Avengers: Infinity War.”)
Hardy persisted, determined to make a film for as broad an audience as possible. It may pay off: Though critics haven’t been won over, “Venom” is set to win the weekend with an estimated take of $60 million.
“I’m not a hardline comic book fan. I’m a creative artist, and I’m going to maybe upset some people, but some people I’m not,” Hardy says.
And so the actor went full bore. For months before filming, Hardy would workshop Venom’s voice, playing with recordings on GarageBand at home while sending paintings and drawings of the symbiote to director Ruben Fleischer. “He was just obsessed with it,” Fleischer says.
On the set, it was Hardy’s idea to jump into an ice-cold tank of lobsters, mining a restaurant scene for comedy. “Most actors, you’d pose to them you’re going to have to get in the lobster tank, and they’d balk at it,” Fleischer says. “He initiated it.”
The actor was cheered on by his 10year-old son Louis, who adores Venom. “If I’m being really candid, he loves all of them,” Hardy says, from Captain America to Batman.
To some, “Venom” is perhaps an audition to enter Marvel’s “Avengers” lineup, a la Spidey. But for Hardy, the question is whether Venom stands up among all the other superheroes. “Could you see him in a combination of movies, whether it’s for DC or Marvel? Can you see Eddie Brock and Venom work with any of your other options? And if you can, that’s successful,” Hardy says.
In person, Hardy’s accessories are his safety valves. As he dives deeper into conversation, a stack of wooden beaded bracelets are pulled on and off and finally discarded in a pile on the couch. He sheds his massive leather jacket. He doesn’t touch his ever-present vape pen. (And, yes, there on his inner bicep is the not-small “Leo knows all” tattoo he got after losing a bet with Leonardo DiCaprio. “It’s like a Basquiat. I’ve been signed,” Hardy cracks.) Occa- sionally, he’ll spin the gold band on his thumb, a token from his grandfather who died.
His family life is one of the big reasons he took “Venom” in the first place. His actress wife, Charlotte Riley, and sons did not accompany him to the shoot in Atlanta. (He and Riley have a toddler who’s almost 3; his eldest is from a previous relationship.)
“Things have got to change significantly,” he says. “It’s another good reason to transition into things that maybe are slightly more lucrative and look at the option of saying, ‘I need time to be here as a parent.’ Like, months of being a parent.”
The days of children’s innocence are fleeting, he knows. “There’s a window with kids where the world revolves around them, because it’s supposed to,” Hardy says.
When they’re young, “they’re little tank commanders, and you’re basically there to carry them from one activity to another and feed them, and everything is done for them. And you don’t want them to bang their heads, you keep them alive, and you keep them enjoying Christmas and whatever you can. Just enjoy it while it lasts!”
It’s that innate wonder Hardy is protecting. A freedom from suffering, from existential fear, that ahh, he says.
“I want to pour more into that because it doesn’t last,” he laughs, considering: “Unless you’re Bill Murray.”