The purpose of an access course such as the one offered at Richmond is to teach pupils the basic tools of their craft. On completion of the course, students might choose to move on to a degree at drama school or they might follow a different acting-related path. Pupils who have completed the course have gone on to study at establishments such as LAMDA and Italia Conti as well as Drama Centre. It is also a good foundation course for students who wish to pursue a degree in drama via a university. The course at Richmond provides important training in the areas of text and voice work, physical theatre, movement, stage combat and preparing pieces for audition.
Tom has nothing but the highest praise for the course, recognising that, without it, he might not be where he is today. ‘I really needed that string to my bow,’ he told the BBC in 2006. ‘It was a make or break year – I didn’t get into acting school the first time around and this was the stepping stone for me.’ He also recognises that the skills he acquired there were vital to a young actor learning his trade. He was taught ‘how to walk, transfer ideas to an audience, how to speak clearly, sing and dance, but perhaps most importantly, to strip a script down to the syllable and get down to the basics of what is being said.’
He describes the place as ‘a goldmine’ and, while he was a student there, relished the fact that professional actors would come and share their knowledge and experience with the pupils, giving them a genuine insight into the reality of their chosen profession. ‘It was a bit like having a soldier come in and tell you what weapons to use.’
In more recent years, Tom has chosen to repay the favour and has returned regularly to help teach students in the ‘Acting for Camera’ module of the course. He is passionate about giving something back to the profession he adores and, equally, the college has been more than happy for him to do so. As well as helping a new generation of actors he feels that, by teaching, he is able to build on his understanding of his profession. ‘I love my craft and I don’t like to see it abused. But I have to give it away to keep it – in doing so I can learn it again.’
To say that the course was the saving grace for the troubled youth, however, would be overstating it. Although he had been presented with a chance to do the one thing he felt he could have a shot at, the ruinous impulses were still very much in evidence and eventually he was kicked off the course for not turning up to classes. To complete any kind of qualification requires a level of discipline and a certain willingness to adhere to the rules – something that Tom still fought against. His addiction to excess was always lurking in the background and, only a few years later, he would hit the self-destruct button in a spectacular fashion. But, for now, his potentially lethal energy had found an alternative conduit.
Despite being too cool for school, the training that Tom undertook at Richmond Drama School enabled him to progress in his chosen sphere. Second time lucky, in 1998, he got himself a place to study for a degree in Drama. He originally had his sights set on the much more conventional RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) but having failed to get in, he found himself at Drama Centre which, it could be said, was more of a fit for him. ‘With my physique and bow legs, I ended up going to the Drama Centre, which is full of characters and dysfunctional types,’ he commented in an interview in 2009. Step right in, Mr Hardy.
Today, Drama Centre is part of Central St Martins College of Art and is located in Clerkenwell, near Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Back when Tom was a student, the college was housed in the unconventional setting of a former Methodist chapel near Chalk Farm station, a stone’s throw from bustling Camden Market in North London. Although the aspiring actors have long gone, the building still stands and now houses a thriving exhibition space.
Drama Centre came into existence in 1963, when co-founders Christopher Fettes and the late Yat Malmgren broke away from the Central School of Speech and Drama to form their own acting school, taking a small group of students with them. Amongst this initial intake – imaginatively labelled Group 1 – were formidable young talents such as Jack Shepherd and Frances de la Tour.
Over the years, Drama Centre has developed something of a mythological status to those outside its walls, even those who are themselves in the business of acting. It is different from any other drama school and, to the uninitiated, it can appear at best exclusive and at worst somewhat cultish. The rarefied atmosphere it projects owes itself to the unique and specific method of teaching adopted there.
Its intense approach to the craft is based around the work of Malmgren, who developed his own methodology, marrying the movement analysis of Rudolf von Laban and the psychoanalysis of Carl Jung. This prescribed approach to acting became known as ‘character analysis’. Drama Centre was – and is – the only drama school to teach in this way. ‘Because it’s only done at that place, it creates a lot of suspicion,’ said a former Drama Centre student, who joined the school the year prior to Tom. ‘There’s masses of jargon, so the words I would use to describe a character would not be understood by someone who has not attended the Drama Centre. When you come out, you need to unlearn being there to get on with “normal” people.’
The school is undoubtedly a tough place to study. The hours are long, the work is intense and students are not necessarily nurtured in the same way as at other institutions – the faint-hearted need not apply. When Tom was a student, a typical day would start at 10am, with classes going on until 5.30pm. Once classes were finished, rehearsals for that session’s end-of-term show would take place from 6pm until 9pm. In addition to coping with such a demanding timetable, students had to be hardy enough to deal with the feedback from tutors, which was often brutal – the ethos being to break a person down in order to build them back up again. Said the former student, ‘They can be hideous to you the whole way through and then, by the third year, think you are marvellous.’
In an interview on the subject, famous Drama Centre alumnus Colin Firth recalled: ‘I chose the Drama Centre because it had a reputation as a hard school, and I thought my resolve should be tested. Either you bend under pressure or you respond to the challenge. I can be very lazy and complacent unless I’m pushed, so I knew I’d be weeded out very quickly if I was making a mistake.’
Unrelenting it may have been, but for those with talent, resilience and determination there were huge rewards to be reaped. Some of the finest actors of their respective generations learned their trade there and have gone on to do remarkable work. Simon Callow, Tara Fitzgerald, Anne-Marie Duff and John Simm are all products of Drama Centre – some of whom Tom would find himself working alongside later in life.
So how did the young Tom Hardy, who had fought against applying himself in previous educational establishments, fare as a student in this fabled institution? It has been widely reported that he didn’t stay the full three years of the course and was kicked out at the end of the first year for being, in his own words, ‘a little shit’ (though he did return to study for the second year). His personality and behaviour, however, were not actually markedly different from any of his contemporaries. He may have carried his share of troubles with him but he was in good company.
The fellow student observed: ‘He was quite intense, but mostly he was an entertainer – he’s a really funny guy. Much more known for telling jokes than for being dark and moody. He was a really positive person to be around, even if he was a bit tortured about stuff. He’s mentally really fast and hungry for everything. He’s a really intelligent guy whose brain ticks over at a rate of knots.’
When asked about Drama Centre, Tom acknowledges that the reputation of the place is, in part, founded upon the myths circulated by drama students from other schools. But he does confirm that a young actor there is stripped down with a particular intensity, which could be seen as a kind of ‘tough love’, as a preparation for the insanely competitive arena of acting where only 2 per cent of actors are ever in work. ‘It’s about terror. And the terror is actually about honesty – terror that is, in the term not to do with terrorism but in the term to do
with: why do you want to be an actor? There are millions of people out there who want to be an actor. And even if you are any good at what you do, what makes you think you should be doing that? How hard are you prepared to work?’
And, for a while, Tom was prepared to work hard. During his time as a drama student, he appeared in productions of Measure for Measure, Tartuffe, The Matchmaker, Ivanov, Filumena and Anatol. In Anatol, it was Christopher Fettes himself who directed Tom. According to the fellow student: ‘They didn’t give Tom the easiest time but they obviously really liked him. He knows what to do. He knows what’s funny, he knows how to time things. He seems really comfortable in it, intense as he is… he was always bloody good.’
Though Drama Centre was steering Tom towards the one career in which he truly felt he had a chance of success, he was still falling prey to his addictions and throughout his time as a student there, was drinking heavily and using drugs – as he put it, his vices were ‘anything I could lay my hands on. You name it, I took it.’
As if the intensity of an acting degree at Drama Centre and the chaos of his addictions wasn’t enough to keep Tom distracted from himself, he then experienced another life-changing event. True to form, it was erratic and spontaneous. As 1998 drew to a close, while he was out and about in London’s Covent Garden, Tom met a production assistant (now producer) Sarah Ward. Something clicked between the pair and, three weeks after setting eyes on each other, they got married. It was, according to Tom, ‘pretty crazy but very exciting at the same time’.
Whatever the circumstances surrounding this whirlwind relationship, there can be no doubt about the strength of Tom’s feelings for Ward. Although the marriage would, in the end, not withstand the insurmountable obstacle of Tom’s addictions, his feelings for her were genuine. ‘I loved Sarah and I still do and we married for all the right reasons,’ he told Nick Curtis of the Evening Standard in 2006. ‘I feel she saved my life on numerous occasions. But in hindsight, we didn’t have the best reasons to stay married, for the health of everyone involved.’
Like so many of those who are dear to Tom or who have played a significant part in his life, Ward has been commemorated in one of his many pieces of body art. On the right-hand side of his lower torso, roughly parallel with his belly button, is inscribed in large letters ‘Till I die SW’. The dragon on Tom’s left arm is also a tribute to Ward, who was born in the Chinese year of the dragon. In recent years, Tom has admitted that the dragon tattoo was ‘a mistake’ and has even tattooed over some of the places on his body where her initials were etched, in one instance with a rock design.
For Tom, however, his tattoos are more than mere decoration. He has admitted that, in his younger days, they existed as a way for him to disguise who he really was, a means of drawing attention away from the unease of his existence. As he has gone through life, he has continued to add tattoos to his body and they now collectively serve as reference points to his life. ‘Every tattoo I have means something to me. Each one is something that I’ve been through in my life or I’ve done, or I’ve been. So I map that out on me, where I’ve been and where I’m going.’
Despite such a multitude of distractions in his personal life, Tom did in fact return to drama school in order to complete his second year. True, he had been thrown out at the end of year one, but this was not an uncommon occurrence. During the second year, though, things changed for Tom in quite a major way, thanks to a casting director called Gary Davy.
The previous year, Davy had seen a photo of Tom in Male Vogue, from his modelling days. He had spotted something in Tom’s look that he felt would be right for the lead role in a forthcoming film he was casting. At the time, however, Tom was in the throes of his degree course and turned down the role in order to continue with his studies. A sensible move, but the young actor must have made quite an impression on Davy and, the following year, Davy contacted him again. This time, he was working as the casting director on an HBO miniseries with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks at the helm. He wanted to cast Tom in the show and, this time, the offer was too tempting to refuse. Serendipity, and of course raw talent, had propelled Tom straight from drama school into the world of high-profile, big-budget television drama. Band of Brothers was to prove both a critical and ratings success and is a project any actor would be proud to have been involved in, however large or small their role.
In a prescient comment made to The Stage in 2004, Davy reflected on why he pinpointed Tom for the role: ‘From the moment I met him, I knew how important he was going to be. I simply knew he was going to be a star.’
How right Davy has proved to be. In recent months, with Tom being cast in bigger roles and teetering on the cusp of breaking into Hollywood, it is obvious that he is set to be one of the most prolific actors of his generation. While continuing to gain critical acclaim, he is also now starting to be something of a box-office draw – if his name is attached to a film, cinema-goers are starting to sit up and take notice. Back then, however, it was the expert eye of a professional who had the foresight to see the natural, raw talent which could, if harnessed correctly, go on to create a superstar.
The route to success is seldom easy and Tom was to encounter some major setbacks on his way. To all intents and purposes, he was making inroads into acting and even finding himself attached to worthy projects – to be plucked from drama school and land a role in a major television series is quite a rarity. On the surface, he was throwing himself into a new career; just below, however, still lurked his addictions and insecurities. It would not take long for the balance to shift and for the dark to eclipse the light.
CHAPTER TWO
SOLDIER, SOLDIER
The first ever glimpse of Tom Hardy on screen is one that still brings delight to his legions of female fans should they choose to seek it out on YouTube or pause it on their DVD player. His first appearance in Band of Brothers is in a rather unexpected bedroom scene in which his character, Private John Janovec, gets to know a member of the local female population in Sturzelberg, Germany during the final months of World War II. Blink and you might miss it, but eagle-eyed devotees of the Hardy physique are even treated to a brief glimpse of the actor’s backside.
Tom’s role in the ensemble drama was not a major one and he only appeared in the final two episodes of the 10-part series. However great or small a part, it was the most amazing start for an actor who hadn’t even completed his training. To be cast in a Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks television production is a dream come true for any actor – and for one just starting out, it was the luckiest of breaks.
Band of Brothers is one of the most revered and respected television miniseries ever broadcast. Based on the best-selling book by World War II historian Stephen E. Ambrose, it follows the journey of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, and charts their experiences from the start of their training in Georgia, parachuting into Normandy on D-Day, taking part in Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, the discovery of one of the concentration camps at Dachau, through to the capture of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest and the end of the war.
At the time it was made, the series broke the record for the most expensive television production, costing $120 million to put together. Hanks and Spielberg, fresh from the success of the movie Saving Private Ryan (which Spielberg had directed and in which Hanks had starred), were originally intending to make separate World War II dramas but eventually decided to collaborate rather than compete and began work on Hanks’ project of the adaptation of Band of Brothers. They had drawn on Stephen E Ambrose’s wealth of knowledge of the period for Saving Private Ryan and, as well as providing the original material for Band of Brothers, he was also enlisted as Executive Producer on the show.
Hanks and Spielberg were actively involved in the casting of the actors who would make up the 50 soldiers whose stories would be followed through the series. It was critical for them to find exactly the right actors to play each man for two reasons: firstly, the men needed
to bond as a unit, and secondly, each actor needed to be able to do justice to the experience of the real veteran they were portraying.
One key aspect of casting was the desire to use little-known actors to fill the roles of the men of Easy Company, a decision which helped to give the show the all-important feeling of an ensemble piece. It also meant that audiences wouldn’t have preconceived opinions of the actors playing the men of Easy Company. One notable exception to this was the casting of Friends star David Schwimmer as Captain Sobel.
It is well documented that, during casting, Spielberg was in charge behind the camera and Tom Hanks staged the acting, keeping his eye on actors who seemed to bond and who appeared appropriate for particular roles. Apparently, though, when casting the leading roles of Major Dick Winters and Captain Lewis Nixon, they knew they had found their men almost as soon as they entered the room. Tom Hanks had met and spent time with Dick Winters and knew he needed a certain kind of actor to do justice to such an outstanding soldier and leader: the role went to up-and-coming English actor, Damian Lewis. The part of Lewis Nixon went to American actor Ron Livingston. As it turned out, the series proved to be a springboard for a number of lesser-known young British actors who have since gone on to become stars in their own right: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Simon Pegg, Marc Warren and, of course, Tom Hardy, to name just a few.
All of the actors, including Tom, appreciated that they were portraying real people and that they had a duty to the men and their families to make sure they gave the best and most accurate performances they possibly could. Speaking to IGN Movies, Tom reflected on his approach to the part: ‘I was in two episodes and had 12 lines. That was the sum total of the work I had to do. But nonetheless, I would work just as hard trying to portray someone whose relatives are still around. Obviously, nobody wants to go out there and say, “This is my big moment”. And I’m playing John Janovec, who is dead. He died for freedom. So, yes, you have to approach that.’
Tom Hardy Page 2