Читать книгу Tom Hardy - Dark Star Rising - James Haydock - Страница 11

For any actor, taking on a role in a long-established franchise is an endeavour that brings both pleasure and pain. On the one hand, it is a sure-fire way of raising the profile and is usually a lucrative pursuit. Johnny Depp, star of the blockbusting Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, has stated that he is paid ‘stupid money’ for making the movies and chooses to justify the pay cheque on the grounds that he is earning the money for his children’s futures. On the other hand, fans of established franchises tend to have strident opinions on the direction of the series and are notoriously choosy about which actors are cast in certain roles. Daniel Craig is a prime example of a fine character actor who found himself thrown into the limelight in 2005 when it was announced he was to be the new James Bond. Before he’d even had a chance to prove himself, Bond aficionados made no secret of their doubts over the choice of Craig as the next 007. As it happened, Craig was arguably one of the best Bonds ever and rapidly hushed the naysayers with his rebooted spy. It takes a resilient actor to handle such pressure and an intelligent one to silence the critics.

Coming into a franchise as long-standing and with such a fanatical following as Star Trek was never going to be easy, and any actor doing so would be sure to elicit a vociferous response from Trekkies. The original television series aired back in 1966 and, since then, the format has been reinvented for new generations of fans. After the original series, the show was recast as Star Trek: The Next Generation, which ran from 1987 to 1994.

The 2002 film, Star Trek: Nemesis, was the 10th film in the Star Trek franchise and the fourth (and final) one to feature the characters from the television series of Next Generation. The plot of Nemesis unfolds as the Starship Enterprise undertakes a journey to a planet called Romulus, the Star Fleet crew believing that the Romulans want to broker peace and negotiate a truce. As they head towards the Romulan Empire, they discover a villainous clone of the Enterprise’s captain, Jean-Luc Picard (played by Patrick Stewart) who is planning an attack on Earth. The clone, Shinzon (played by Tom), is the result of an experiment conducted by the Romulans in an attempt to take Picard’s place on the Enterprise and use the clone as a spy – but after a change in Romulan government, the clone plan is shelved and Shinzon is sent to Remus as a slave. Having been cast aside on Remus, Shinzon plots his power grab. According to Patrick Stewart, the original intention was not for there to be a clone but for Picard to find a long-lost son, but the actor, amongst others, felt that this might make for too sentimental a storyline.

The story raises interesting issues, such as how far a person’s character is formed from their genetic blueprint and to what degree they are influenced by their environment. Shinzon is theoretically the same as Picard but has grown up surrounded by beings from different races – and has been treated badly by them.

From the outset, director Stuart Baird and producer Rick Berman had clear ideas about the kind of actor they were looking for to play Shinzon. For a start, the character is a clone of Picard (albeit 25 years younger), so the right candidate had to bear some resemblance to him. He also needed to be an actor with the ability to tap into the darker side of human nature in order to portray a complex and tortured villain. Additionally, the actor in question had to be assured enough to star opposite not only one of the most respected actors of his generation but also the man who had so successfully inhabited the skin of Captain Picard for 16 years.

The search for Shinzon was a lengthy one, with the part at one point apparently being intended for Jude Law. Baird ultimately decided, though, that he wanted an unknown actor for the part. Also paramount was to find someone with sex appeal and who would attract younger fans to the film. Casting directors scoured the UK for their man and six actors were screen tested for the role before they eventually alighted upon Tom, who turned out to have just the right ingredients for the part. ‘He had an edge … a street feel,’ said Baird.

The audition process, though, was anything but easy. At the time of casting, Tom was still out in Morocco filming Simon, An English Legionnaire. It transpired that his agent had been contacted by Patrick Stewart who wanted to find out if she knew of any actors who would be a reasonable fit for the part of Picard’s evil clone. She knew just the young man and, naturally, Tom jumped at the chance to take on a major Hollywood role. Particular pages from the script were sent out to him in Morocco but, true to his non-conformist style, he managed to get hold of the script in its entirety and elected to use other parts of it for the audition tape he was making. Even more unconventionally, he chose to deliver some of the dialogue to camera in the nude. The maverick nature of his tape appealed to Stuart Baird and also to Patrick Stewart, who commented: ‘I was riveted by it and Rick [Berman] was too… I said, “There’s something very odd about this fellow, but I think we should see him.”’ Having made quite an impression, Tom got the call to go to LA for a screen test.

Poised for what could be his big break into Hollywood, Tom was understandably nervous and, on his arrival in LA, was unexpectedly given the full Tinseltown star treatment. The night before the screen test, he was whisked from the airport to a sumptuous hotel in a chauffeur-driven limousine. Unable to believe his luck, he got out his video camera and excitedly filmed his luxurious room as a memento to show his wife, Sarah, and family back at home. ‘And then, suddenly, I realised it was a school day next day. I had serious work to do. Prepare. Panic, panic. So I filmed myself doing my serious work – which is something I do – going through the script again. It was just in case… Whatever happened in this screen test, I’ve got this on tape, doing my stuff in a relaxed environment – how I want to play this character,’ he explained to SFX magazine.

Unfortunately for Tom, the following day, his nerves got the better of him and the screen test turned out to be little short of disastrous. ‘I was supposed to be this incredible villain and instead I’m a quivering nervous wreck, waiting to be exposed and sent back to Britain. Then Patrick Stewart comes in dressed as Picard in his Star Fleet uniform and we did the scene and it was terrible, I mean awful, I was appalling,’ he told the Sun in 2002.

Despite the disappointing performance, Tom was determined not to lose out on the part and insisted that Baird take a look at the character and script work he had recorded on his camera the previous night. His preference would have been for the director to have seen only his acting, not the part of the tape in which he had been showing off his Hollywood hotel and, as he put it, ‘messing around in my boxers.’ Unfortunately, there were no videotape editors on hand at the studio to extract the relevant part of the tape, so Tom was obliged to hand it over in its entirety, scantily-clad antics and all. One can only imagine the dreadful sinking feeling he must have experienced as the handed over the tape. Having resigned himself to having blown his big chance, he was pleasantly surprised when he was offered the part a few days later.

Winning the part was just the first step of a challenging process. Tom has admitted that, while he was aware of Star Trek, he had never been a Trekkie, so had to immerse himself in the programme’s history and characters. He was also acutely aware of the pressure that came with a major role in a big-budget franchise film: ‘To be 23 or 24 and have that kind of money on my shoulders… I thought, if you f**k this up, Hardy… to be aware you’re holding that kind of weight – it was a huge deal for me,’ he explained to the Sunday Times in 2006.

When it came to taking Shinzon from script to screen, it was clear that he would not succeed as a character in his own right if he was played as simply an impression of Picard. While Tom did pay attention to certain physical aspects of the Picard character, when it came to the essence of Shinzon, he brought his own interpretation to the nature of his villainy. In an interview with IGN Movies, Tom explained how he set about differentiating Shinzon from Picard so that he might give him some depth: ‘In order to make this gentleman three-dimensional as opposed to one-dimensional, I had to find a human issue on him. And that means I don’t have to copy or mimic anything that Patrick does at all. Which is very free, because then all the sudden [sic] you have a foundation to develop a character.’

Later in his career, Tom would garner huge acclaim for his powerhouse performances as dark or disturbed characters (Oliver Twist’s Bill Sikes, Charles Bronson, The Take’s Freddie Jackson). His success in bringing these kinds of characters to life is in part down to his skill at seeing both the light as well as the shade in the characters he plays. He has explained that, if a character he is studying is essentially a dark character, he searches for the light in him and vice versa. Preparing for Shinzon – one of the first of such types he was to take on for the big screen – was no different. A hard worker and an actor who always strives to do better, Tom threw himself into capturing the opposing forces that made Shinzon complex and three-dimensional. Speaking to the LA Times, he commented: ‘He’s a monster, but he’s also a product of circumstances who’s deeply in pain.’ Thankfully, the new Star Trek villain was in very capable hands. There would be no pantomime baddie performance from Tom.

Looks-wise, Tom and Patrick Stewart were not dissimilar – Stewart even commented that Tom was ‘the spitting image of me as a young man’ – but Tom’s physical appearance still had to be tweaked so that he genuinely looked as if he could have been created from the same DNA as his nemesis. One of the most noticeable things about Patrick Stewart’s – and therefore Picard’s – appearance is his baldness, so the hair clearly had to go. This was not a problem, as Tom had not long had his hair shaved off for his role in Simon: An English Legionnaire and so was no stranger to sporting a hairless pate. Tom’s lips were, unsurprisingly, slightly bigger that Stewart’s and this difference was addressed by making a fake scar for Tom’s mouth which gave his lips a look that was, as he put it, ‘slightly beaten’. The make-up team then went even further and took a cast of Patrick Stewart’s nose and chin to make latex replicas of them for Tom to wear. Tom explained the lengths to which they went in order to achieve the likeness to Trekweb.com: ‘We moulded the nose – several thousand noses, I think – before we got the right nose. Then, because my lips are slightly larger, we added a scar to take down the size of my lips. We had all this ready to go in latex but we had gelatine as well and under the lights my nose would sort of grow – and then sag.’

And while the costume Tom had to wear for the film was somewhat uncomfortable, he claimed its restrictive design actually assisted with his embodiment of the character of Shinzon. ‘It was incredibly uncomfortable, and within that being uncomfortable it added to the character for me. You know what I mean? Because he’s a very bowed and repressed young man. That whole suit was very constricting and it didn’t allow much movement because his whole life hasn’t allowed much movement,’ he explained to IGN Movies website. It certainly looked impressive on screen in all its rubber glory, but its spectacular appearance came at a price and Tom admitted that he’d needed physio on his back after spending so many hours encased in it!

Naturally, when it came to being on set, Tom spent the majority of his time working alongside Patrick Stewart. The young actor was conscious of the fact that he was relatively new to the game and, while it was a daunting prospect to star opposite someone as esteemed as Stewart, he took the opportunity to benefit from the wealth of the older actor’s experience. The pair took the time to sit and talk through their thoughts on what would work for their characters and Tom allowed himself to learn from the more seasoned actors around him. While on set, Stewart had plenty of time for Tom, but was mindful of the fact that, because of the nature of their on-screen relationship, it would be wise to keep a bit of distance between them: in other words, it wouldn’t benefit the dynamic of the film if they were to become best mates. ‘I didn’t want him to be someone I could have a beer with. It would have showed. But I liked him a lot,’ Stewart remarked.

As well as being relatively new to professional acting, Tom also had to cope with being a late addition to a long-established family of actors, the majority of whom were all Star Trek old hands. Although they were inclusive and welcoming, Tom realised that, by stepping into the scenario as a villain, it was slightly easier for him to establish himself amongst them. The nature of his role meant that it was acceptable for him to fall outside the camaraderie of the main group of actors. ‘It was a group who are very accepting … It was quite bizarre having so many people who knew what they were doing – it was lucky that I was a villain, in many ways,’ he said.

There was one cast member in particular with whom Tom got on like a house on fire. Ron Perlman, who plays the Reman viceroy Vkruk in the film, is an experienced Hollywood actor who has appeared in countless movies and television series. Since Star Trek: Nemesis, Perlman is best known to cinema audiences for his role in the Hellboy movie franchise. Tom found it a pleasure to work with Perlman and has stated how generous and funny he was as a colleague on set. In more recent years, Perlman has expressed how much he enjoyed spending time with Tom and how delighted he is that Tom is now so in demand as an actor. Speaking to Startrek.com to commemorate the eight-year anniversary of the release of Star Trek: Nemesis, Perlman reflected generously: ‘Tom has become probably one of the most sought-after actors in the world. Did you see this movie he did, Bronson? It was brilliant. And now Tom is in everything. I loved him when I first met him. I loved working with him. I found him to be really smart, really a great kid. He was much younger then. He was also really humble and knew that he was kind of living a charmed life by playing major roles in major motion pictures. Everything I like about an actor was in this kid, and I’m so happy to see what’s happening to him now.’

Once the film had wrapped, Tom had a promise to keep before he flew home to the UK. He had told his agent, Lindy King, that if she got him into Hollywood, he would honour her by having her name tattooed on his arm. If you look closely, on the inside of Tom’s left arm, just above the elbow joint, you can see Lindy’s name just below a tattoo of a crown.

Amongst the Star Trek fraternity, there exists a theory that even-numbered Star Trek films are always good. Sadly, this theory didn’t hold water when it came to their opinions of Star Trek: Nemesis which, as the 10th movie in the series, should by rights have been a cracker. Amongst Trekkies, there were rumblings of discontent when it came to light that director Stuart Baird was not intimately acquainted with existing material and apparently hadn’t attempted to do any research in the same way that other new Trek directors had in the past. On the whole, fans seemed to find the film bland and unimaginative.

For critics, their disapproval largely arose from the fact that the Next Generation part of the franchise was now past its sell-by date, and Star Trek: Nemesis seemed to have made no effort to breathe new life into it. As Anthony Quinn quipped in the Independent: ‘It’s another Star Trek movie, the 10th in a series that’s still boldly going where most franchises would have called it a day.’

In fact, the film did signal the end of the Next Generation series and was judged by Patrick Stewart to be ‘a suitable farewell. A number of us feel we don’t want to outstay our welcome.’ It appeared they may have already done just that.

Although the film did not fare well from the sharp tongues of the critics, Tom was widely praised for his performance. He even won himself a nomination for a Saturn Award from the Academy of Science Fiction and Fantasy in the Best Supporting Actor category (the award was ultimately won by Sean Astin for his part in the third instalment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King). The British media jumped on the role of Shinzon as being Tom’s big break and proclaimed him to be the next big thing in British acting. Variety wrote that he showed ‘charisma in a stock villain role that should (given the circumstances) have been written with more dimensionality.’

One American critic, Michael Kleinschrodt described him as the film’s ‘best surprise,’ going on to say: ‘The young man has no trouble holding his own in scene after scene opposite Stewart, a fair indication that he might just have a stellar career ahead of him.’ It was a reasonable assumption to make, given the awesome show of talent from the young actor so far. And Tom did have a ‘stellar career’ ahead of him – but it would take almost a decade for him to get everything in the right place and show the world what he was capable of.

Star Trek was not the only project Tom had been working on at this time, but it was without doubt the most high profile and it brought with it the burden of expectation. Unfortunately, the next few releases with his name attached to them were either unremarkable or Tom’s role in them was something of a ‘blink and you miss him’ experience. None of the films provided that vital stepping stone he needed to capitalise on his new-found recognition.

The Reckoning, released in 2003, is a medieval murder mystery with an impressive cast headed up by Willem Dafoe and Paul Bettany. The plot concerns a priest (Bettany) who flees his village after being caught having sex with a married woman. Whilst on the run, he encounters a travelling theatre troupe that traverses the country performing morality plays. They reluctantly allow him to join and subsequently find themselves at the centre of a genuine murder mystery. Tom’s role in the film is that of a member of the travelling players. It’s not a lead role and he’s very much in the background of the action. The one thing that may just spark a bit of interest among Hardy devotees is that his character is more often than not required to take on the parts of female characters in the morality plays, so he is often dressed in women’s clothing and sporting make-up on camera. Excerpts for a ‘before they were famous’ set of clips in the future, perhaps.

In the promotional puff, Dot the I was billed as a love story with a psychological twist. While at first it seems to be the intriguing tale of a love triangle, it eventually descends into a rather silly plot in which the denouement takes on more importance than the characters involved. Writing in Variety, David Rooney was pretty categorical in his dismissal of the film, commenting: ‘Behind its slick veneer and the glibness of its preposterous premise and dark twists, there’s a yawning absence of charm or substance in this London-set love triangle, as well as a lack of chemistry between its three leads.’ The three lead characters were played by Gael Garcia Bernal, James D’Arcy and Natalia Verbeke, while Tom’s character (also called Tom) was a more minor role and was, along with Charlie Cox, Kit’s (Bernal) friend. Between the two of them, they provided some light-hearted relief from the mayhem of the rest of the story.

Finally, LD50 was filmed between October 2002 and early 2003 (also the year of its release). In it, Tom plays a character called Matt, a member of a group of animal rights activists. Having been involved in animal liberation raids on research laboratories in the past, this time the group reunite to rescue a friend who was left behind at a facility when a previous raid was interrupted. The group receives a message indicating that their friend is being subjected to a traumatic ordeal. Their mercy mission takes a sinister turn and they get more than they bargained for as they attempt to track down their missing friend. Classified as a ‘psychological horror’, the film was probably most notable for the fact it co-starred Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice. It was first shown in the USA at the Detroit International Horror Film Festival but in most territories it went straight to DVD and made little impact.

Underneath it all, Tom was still a troubled soul. Like many other young actors, he was plagued by insecurity, as he recalled in a 2009 interview with Daily Variety: ‘I came back from Star Trek, and I didn’t have any work, and I panicked.’ To make matters worse, he was still a slave to his drink and drug addictions. While acting was occupying his ‘busy head’ to a degree, the only way he could really calm the noise in his mind was by seeking escape into the fug of alcohol and drug binges.

With the benefit of hindsight, he more recently reflected on this period of his life when he met up for a second time with Lodown magazine and remembered an interview he had done with them during the press junkets for Star Trek. Talking to them in 2011, he looked back on what his state of mind had been in 2002: ‘I wasn’t even on the f*****g planet. Let’s make no bones about it, I was on rocket fuel. Man I was f****d. And I thought that film was going to make me a superstar. How wrong was I?’

Tom is famous for his candidness in interviews and one story in particular (that has been repeated time and again) demonstrates the extent to which he seemed hellbent on derailing a potentially remarkable career. Speaking on The Jonathan Ross Show in 2010, he admitted that there had been many occasions on which he’d blacked out whilst bingeing on either drugs or alcohol. He recounted a time when he had been in LA for a meeting with director John Woo about a possible film role. Thanks to who knows what kind of misdemeanours, he missed the meeting, instead waking up in a bed in an unknown location in the city, next to a naked man with a gun – and a cat. It might sound like a scene from The Hangover but this was Tom’s reality at the time. As he told Ross: ‘The safety of the gun was off, so I must have fallen asleep looking down the barrel of a gun.’

As Tom is now acutely aware, talent alone is not enough to build an acting career – it takes hard work and commitment, and his exorbitant behaviour was proving a massive impediment to his progression. ‘There comes a point when the world will stop rewarding potential and talent, natural gifts. There’s only so long that people will put up with the potential of working with someone who could be brilliant,’ Tom told Men’s Health magazine. Fortunately for his health and his career, his exhausted body forced his hand in cleaning up his act.

Excessive indulgence in potentially lethal substances is a habit that can only be endured for so long before the body – and often the mind – gives up. Inevitably things build towards a critical point and, in some cases, an addict will take heed of the warning signs and choose that time to change their behaviour. For actor and comedian Robin Williams, for example, the wake-up call came in the form of the drug-related death of his friend John Belushi, in whose company he had been the night Belushi died. The tragedy brought into focus the danger of his own addiction to cocaine. He checked into rehab and, since becoming clean, has had the most remarkable film career. In other cases, sadly, these warning signs are dismissed and can lead to tragic and untimely deaths. In press interviews with Tom, the point at which he woke up to himself is repeatedly referred to – and why not? It makes great copy for journalists and it gives Tom a unique selling point: the bad boy from the right side of the tracks who pulled himself back from self-destruction.

Towards the end of 2002, during the nocturnal hours when London’s West End truly comes alive, Tom was often to be spotted out and about on the busy streets, chasing highs. The superstardom he had expected had not been forthcoming and he didn’t have work on tap to occupy his restless mind. His insecurities piled up and he quietened his inner turmoil by participating in a lifestyle that blurred the hard edges of reality. One night, on Soho’s Old Compton Street, his indulgence went too far and he collapsed, crack pipe in hand, covered in blood and vomit. His burnout was so severe that he was taken straight to hospital. Upon his release, he returned to his parents’ house in East Sheen and they helped him enrol on a recovery programme. ‘That was a lesson to me,’ he told the Mail & Guardian in 2011. ‘I was fed to the Kraken and popped out the other side. In death I was reborn…’

Sadly, one casualty of his breakdown was his marriage to Sarah. For obvious reasons, Tom doesn’t go into great detail about this aspect of his recovery but part of his rehabilitation was to make amends to his parents and his ex-wife for his past behaviour. His recovery also signalled that he had finally grown up and taken responsibility for himself and his actions. ‘It was the end of a childhood which had gone on too long, that didn’t grow into adulthood and wasn’t going to work alongside my profession,’ he admitted.

What his bad behaviour did do, though, was to give him experience of the terrifying side of human nature. His predilection for dangerous substances and situations pushed him mentally – and often physically – into all kinds of desperate places; corners of the world and of the mind where most would rather not go. And he has exploited his knowledge of these grim recesses of the soul for some of his most spectacular performances.

Although he had ditched the drink and drugs, he was all too aware that there was still chaos inside his head that needed some kind of outlet. ‘I can’t stand being in my head, that’s why I have to get out of it. That’s where the drugs and drink came in. I don’t do any of that any more, though. That’s why I have to act,’ he explained to The Times in 2007. To the delight of critics and fans, Tom had decided to channel his adrenal fizz into his work – a wise choice, considering the breathtaking results that have followed.

It was fitting, then, that the first role he undertook as the clean and sober Tom was that of a desperate drug addict. Guided by his agent Lindy King, the direction of Tom’s rebooted career was to have its foundations on the stage rather than the screen. In Arabia We’d All Be Kings, by Stephen Adly Guirgis, is set in New York in 1996, at the time when mayor Rudy Giuliani was redeveloping Times Square. The action of the play takes place around a bar in Hell’s Kitchen, where the misfits who constitute the characters of the play gather. The production was directed by Robert Delamere and staged in April and May of 2003 at the Hampstead Theatre in London, which touted the play as ‘an uplifting tragi-comedy capturing the vibrancy of a unique precinct under threat’.

Tom’s character was the aptly-named Skank, a junkie who turns to selling his body for money to fund his increasing drug dependency. It might seem ironic that this was the role that restarted Tom’s acting career, but for him it was a gift: ‘After I came out of hospital, my first job was playing a crackhead alcoholic rent boy in a play, which was tremendously cathartic because I was re-enacting a load of stuff I had just lived,’ he said in an interview with the Irish Times.

It should also be remembered that this was Tom’s professional stage debut. Since he left drama school to be in Band of Brothers, all his jobs had involved acting for film. For someone who has admitted – and demonstrated – that he has a debilitating fear of failure, to go from rehab straight to a stage performance must have been daunting, to say the least. On the stage, there are no second takes, no re-shoots and the actors have to bring everything to their performance, night after night. Speaking to the Evening Standard a few months after the play had ended its run, Tom described how he felt when acting on stage. ‘Terrified – every time. You’re bringing a character to life in a gladiatorial ring where people want to see you fail.’

When the theatre critics came to assess the play, failure was not a word they juxtaposed with the name Tom Hardy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Whatever their comments on the production itself, they were united in their praise of Tom’s performance. Nicholas De Jongh of the Evening Standard described it as ‘a remarkable stage debut’ and Paul Taylor of the Independent described Skank as ‘brilliantly played by Tom Hardy’.

Barely had Tom taken his final bow at the Hampstead Theatre than he found himself travelling up to Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre to work under the direction of Robert Delamere once more. This time, the play was The Modernists written by Jeff Noon, a writer better known for his fantasy novels than for his plays. The Modernists is set in Soho in the early 1960s and the drama centres around four musicians who are Mods in the old sense of the word. They live at a time before Mods became associated with violence, parkas and scooters; they follow a strict dress code and they speak using a very specific vocabulary. In fact, they are somewhat dandy and not at all like the popular projection of the Mod. Tom’s role was to play Vincent, who is described as the ‘alpha male’ of the group. Critics mostly agreed that the play had a lot of potential but was lacking in drama. Dominic Cavendish, writing for the Daily Telegraph, commented: ‘The play’s main event proves to be the leader Vincent’s psychological collapse, mirroring this hermetic sub-culture’s own implosion. But the crisis always feels more aridly theoretical than theatrically true-to-life.’

Once the short run of The Modernists came to an end, there was no rest for the reinvigorated young actor and, in the autumn, he went on to consolidate his stage craft by appearing at the Royal Court Theatre in Blood, by Swedish playwright Lars Noren. Without wanting to give too much of the plot away, Blood is a modern reworking of the Oedipus story and Tom’s character, Luca, is a medical student who was orphaned as a child. His psychoanalyst, Eric (Nicholas Le Prevost), is also his lover and, through the course of the play, Eric’s wife (Francesca Annis) develops a sexual relationship with him as well.

The play itself didn’t fare well in terms of the critics’ reactions. Paul Taylor writing for the Independent found it so farcical that he felt the ‘most impressive feature of the evening is the heroic way Ms Annis and Mr Le Prevost manage to keep a straight face’. Other critics were less harsh: Michael Billington of the Guardian felt the play was flawed but found it ‘exquisitely gripping’. He described Tom as giving Luca ‘intemperate rage’ and Nicholas De Jongh of the Evening Standard was even more enthusiastic, stating: ‘Superlative Tom Hardy invests Luca with raw energy and suppressed desperation.’

It seemed that Tom had staunch support from the Evening Standard camp so it was perhaps unsurprising when his name was amongst the nominations for that newspaper’s theatre awards for 2003. The category in which he found himself nominated was ‘Outstanding Newcomer’ and his shortlisted rivals were Lisa Dillon for her role as Hilda in Ibsen’s The Master Builder and Amanda Drew for Eastward Ho.

The lavish awards ceremony was held at the Savoy Hotel in November 2003. The great and the good of London’s theatreland were present and the proceedings were presided over by Rory Bremner. The award for Outstanding Newcomer was presented by Nicholas Hytner, then the newly appointed director of the National Theatre. As a prelude to presenting the award, Hytner gave a light-hearted speech in which he congratulated all three of the shortlisted nominees and quipped that he hoped they would only do enough ‘dodgy television’ to finance their loft conversions.

The award, of course, went to Tom for his performances in both In Arabia We’d All Be Kings and Blood. He admitted he was very nervous as he collected his statuette and amongst his obligatory thanks were the Hampstead Theatre and those involved in getting the production off the ground there, as well as his parents, his girlfriend, his agent, Lindy King and all his friends and family, who he referred to as his ‘support unit’. And not to be forgotten was his dog, Max, who he said would be very grumpy if he was left off the list. Finally, he expressed his gratitude to the Evening Standard, Nick De Jongh and everyone who had voted for him.

To further boost Tom’s credibility, his performance in In Arabia We’d All be Kings also garnered him a nomination at the 2004 Laurence Olivier Theatre Awards, again in the category of Most Promising Newcomer in an Affiliate Theatre. Sadly he didn’t win the double this time and the award went to playwright Debbie Tucker for Born Bad, also staged at the Hampstead Theatre.

It is gratifying to observe just how successfully Tom had managed to turn his life around in the space of a year. As 2003 drew to a close, he was sadly without his marriage – but there were so many positives on which he could draw as 2004 dawned. He had conquered his drug and drink addictions and, although recovering from such dependencies are battles that are never truly won, he was in a new frame of mind and could see that his new-found sobriety was bearing fruit on the work front. He had achieved recognition for his acting and was determined to capitalise on this. It was starting to look as though Tom’s time might yet come.