Mad Max star: Action heroes look like vegans

ACTOR Tom Hardy has criticised the ‘boring’ leading roles available in modern action films.

The British star of Mad Max: Fury Road, pictured, blasted the ‘homogenised sort of eight-pack, tanned, straight-teeth, physicalised, action-hero leading male’ in a recent interview.

The 39-year-old drew a distinction between Harrison Ford’s 1980s Indiana Jones and Australian actor Chris Hemsworth’s more recent portrayal of Thor in several Marvel Universe films.

Hardy, who also appeared in Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, told The Sunday Times: ‘One was allowed to express personal characteristics... Now you’ve got to look like you’ve just come off a vegan diet, gone to the gym, part Navy Seal, really clean-valued, clean-living, moralistic –and then you go out and save the world from an impending danger that isn’t really dangerous at all.’

The actor is currently appearing in Taboo on BBC1, which he created with his writer father, Edward ‘Chips’ Hardy. In the series, set in 1814, Hardy plays a rogue adventurer long believed to be dead.