‘It’s crisis directing,’ Delamere told the Guardian at the time. He also noted the contrast between the cheek by jowl nature of the Latchmere production and the rather more sophisticated one he was working on at the Almeida. Although chaotic, it was an exciting experience and he appreciated what was being achieved with Roger and Vanessa. ‘It’s great having such a little space and without all that pressure you get in bigger theatres. This is about the personalities in the room, and that’s it.’ He also pointed out that the nature of the material Tom had chosen suited the approach to staging it.
The production was billed as ‘shotgun’ theatre and was ‘a crazy idea to put on a show in no time at all’. There were just four performances in all and tickets were free as the company deemed it to be a workshop rather than a polished theatre production. That’s not to say that those involved didn’t take what they were doing seriously – the aim, according to Tom, was to provide the same enjoyment from a night out as a conventional theatre trip would.
It was in this production that the seeds were sown for the formation of Tom and Robert Delamere’s theatre company – named, aptly, Shotgun. Following Roger and Vanessa, the Latchmere offered Tom a residency in their performance space and he snapped up the opportunity. In fact, what he created was less of a formal theatre company and more of an actors’ co-operative – or as he put it, a ‘splinter cell group’. He wanted to establish an informal and safe space where actors, writers and performers of any level could get together, explore their ideas and unleash their creative talent. ‘There should be no pressure, no commitment, just talent and immediate response to the material that walks in the door,’ he declared, when announcing the formation of the group. From a personal perspective, Tom also felt that, within the confines of pressured production schedules of film and television, actors didn’t have enough time to really dig deep into the characters they were to play, and wanted Shotgun to provide them with the chance to share the development of their work with other, like-minded people. There was to be ‘no fear, no ego, just good hard clean fun’. The venture did have a whiff of Fight Club mentality about it, though – attendance at the Shotgun workshops was by invitation only, ‘to keep it safe’.
The project was indeed worthy and showed that Tom was keen both to invest something in the community and to continue learning new ways of keeping his beloved craft fresh and organic. On a more practical level, he also claimed that Shotgun stopped him and his fellow actors from ‘getting upset when the phone doesn’t ring during our downtime’.
Although Tom’s relationship with his parents had been put under enormous strain during his years of addiction, he had always remained close to them and, once he was clean and sober, his relationship with his father took on a new lease of life. They were both intelligent and creative souls and given that Chips had written plays in the past, it was only a matter of time until he became involved in the creative ventures of Shotgun. Along with Chips and other members of the Shotgun team, Tom undertook a project named, interestingly, the Octoplot Revolution – which sounds rather more radical than it actually was. In fact, it was simply a guide giving instructions on how to write a play (or screenplay) in eight stages. ‘It’s a simple format and it becomes a way of expressing yourself. Anyone can follow it,’ Tom explained to Baz Bamigboye of the Daily Mail in August 2006.
The Octoplot Revolution was an idea that extended beyond the confines of Shotgun. Tom, Chips and some of the other Shotgun members were aiming to integrate the Octoplot Revolution into an educational outreach programme for 14 to 16 year olds, which would stretch across 32 London boroughs.
It wasn’t long, however, before Tom’s working relationship with educational establishments came to an abrupt halt. In November 2006, he and other members of Shotgun were due to go and speak to pupils from 10 schools about their work – and also about Tom’s own life and career. The talk was part of a project called London Schools Masterclass funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). Just a couple of weeks before the event, Tom gave an in-depth interview to the Evening Standard in which he laid bare the problems of his youth, his brushes with the law and his addictions. Within two days of the interview appearing, Tom was informed that the DfES was anxious about the reaction to the revelations in the interview and had therefore decided to postpone the masterclass.
The decision of the DfES could be construed as hasty and reactionary – and its ramifications would certainly be disappointing for the young people who would have benefited from the talk. Granted, Tom had not lived a model life but he was a fine example of someone who had, through hard work and determination, pushed himself firmly back on track. Plus he had made no secret of his past – surely better than covering it up and being exposed further down the line? Speaking to the Telegraph at the time, he expressed his frustration at the cancellation, describing the decision as ‘quite bureaucratic and quite puritan. All we are interested in is giving something back to the community.’ He added: ‘We wanted the kids to feel the pleasure and fulfilment we feel as professional performers. If we can help any child leave school with a sense of purpose and usefulness, then that has to be a good thing.’ After all, Tom knew better than anyone how disheartening it could be to leave school with no aspirations, goals or direction.
Dispiriting though this was, the endeavours of Shotgun continued apace. Next up was their first production, a play called Blue on Blue, written by Chips. The play tells the story of a wheelchair-bound war veteran living with his nephew. The younger character is damaged and forced to confront his problems. The playwright described his play as ‘a hard-arsed look at compulsion and co-dependency but… first and foremost, a darkly funny play about people.’
Speaking to the Evening Standard (in the very interview at which the DfES took such great umbrage) Chips explained that he had drawn on parts of his relationship with Tom when writing Blue on Blue. Speaking about his son, Chips said: ‘We’ve had our ups and downs over the years, but Tom wouldn’t be such a good actor if he didn’t have those things in him.’
The play was staged at the Latchmere during November 2006 and was directed by Tom. Simon Rhodes, Gideon Turner and Danielle Urbas filled the roles of uncle, nephew and Marta the home help respectively. It was only on for a few nights but its run was a sell-out and the Daily Mail review stated that the play ‘astutely raises difficult social problems without being preachy’. Being under Tom Hardy’s directorship, it would have seemed odd if it had been any other way.
Shotgun followed up Blue on Blue with a play called Two Storm Wood by Edward Bennett-Coles, staged in February 2007. Perhaps inevitably, though, the indie theatre company didn’t stay together for much longer. Work commitments must have eaten up the amount of time that Tom was able to devote to his project, but looking back on the Shotgun days in an interview with Time Out in 2009 he recalled: ‘Everybody joined up and it was all dope, then everyone went solo and it wasn’t as good. I’ve gotta bring it back for the reunion. Even if it is just a karaoke night.’
Whatever his best intentions were with offshoot projects like Shotgun, with his career now taking off in ways he probably never imagined possible, it seems unlikely that Tom will have the time to revisit his theatre company. Perhaps there lies a project for when the credits have rolled on his last movie.
At the same time as charging around trying to pull together his first ‘shotgun’ production, Tom had been busy fulfilling professional commitments. His schedule dictated that work on Roger and Vanessa had to be fitted in around filming for the television drama Colditz, in which he had a principal role.
The two-part ITV drama took its inspiration from Henry Chancellor’s book of the same name. The source material for the book was interviews with allied soldiers who had been held in the German high-security prison during the Second World War. The television adaptation centres on the fates of three fictional characters who initially escape from a prisoner of war camp during the war. Two of them are captured and taken to Colditz (Jack Ros
e, played by Tom, and Tom Willis, played by Laurence Fox) while the third (Nick McGrade, played by Damian Lewis) makes it back to England where he falls in love with Lizzie (Sophia Myles), who happens to be the sweetheart of Jack. The adaptation also boasted a sprinkle of Hollywood stardust in the form of Jason Priestley (star of teen drama Beverly Hills 90210) who played Canadian soldier Rhett Barker, also an inmate of the prison. Shooting took place over the summer of 2004, in London and on location in the Czech Republic. ‘Colditz’ was in fact a medieval monastery in Kutna Hora, a town located about 70km east of Prague.
The character of Jack Rose is essentially the hero of the piece: dependable, honest and brave, he stands in stark contrast to deceitful, selfish Nick McGrade who wants to keep Rose’s love Lizzie for himself by any means possible. Tom described Rose as ‘an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances’ and this was a change from the kind of role the actor was accustomed to taking. ‘I’ve never played a straight lead before,’ he mused. ‘I normally get tortured characters and villains and angry young men.’ Fortunately for Tom, he did get the chance to delve back into his tough-guy store cupboard, for a scene in which he comes to physical blows with Willis.
Tom recognised that, as in Band of Brothers, a delicate touch was required when bringing Jack Rose to life. Although the characters were fictional, he was all too aware that they were representations of people who had experienced incarceration in Colditz. ‘People have died in these uniforms. It’s important that this drama pays tribute to what those guys did,’ he told the Independent in 2005.
Colditz saw Tom reunited with his Band of Brothers co-star, Damian Lewis. While Lewis was complimentary about Tom and predicted great things for him in the future, he also joked about how, in both productions, Tom’s character had been the one who’d had all the luck with women. ‘I always resented Tom for turning up on Band of Brothers and getting the girl – in fact, the only girl in a cast of hundreds of smelly men! I, on the other hand, spent eight months with my face squashed up against someone else’s backside in one sodden trench after another. And it looks as if Tom might have got the girl again, damn his eyes,’ Lewis joked to the Sunday Mercury. Tom was eager to return the praise, expressing how pleased he was to be working with Lewis again, who had coincidentally also recently appeared in a production at the Almeida. ‘I’ve been on his heels for a bit so it was good to work with him – he’s a character,’ said Tom.
It’s interesting to note that when he spoke about appearing in the drama, Tom made reference to the brief spell of time that actors have to explore their characters when confined by production timetables. As well as shooting, actors would also be reading the script, trying to cram in research and getting to know the story. It was this scarcity of preparation time that had been one of the principal reasons for the formation of Shotgun – it was a space where actors could come and explore their characters in the company of other professionals.
Colditz was broadcast over Easter weekend in 2005, as part of ITV’s commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the end of the War. Though the actors had all done their best to be respectful to veterans of the Second World War, some of the men who had been incarcerated in Colditz didn’t respond positively to the programme. Amongst the criticisms levelled at it were that it didn’t offer a true representation of what life had been like within the confines of the prison. A scene in which German officers carry out a mock execution was deemed to be too far from the truth. ‘That sort of mock execution did not go on at Colditz and to pretend it did is just not acceptable,’ said a former Colditz prisoner, Ken Lockwood, when speaking to the Telegraph. ‘Both sides appreciated the other’s point of view and as time went on some of the Germans grew to respect us.’ It was also pointed out that there were some costume errors and that the set looked far too flimsy to be a high-security fortress from which there was little hope of escape.
Naturally, the producers rallied to its defence, stating that some liberties had been taken in order to broaden the appeal of the drama. They needed to reach a prime-time ITV audience, which was a significantly younger demographic than that which made up the voices of dissent.
Television critics were equally unimpressed with Colditz and adopted a rather scornful stance in their notices about the show. Most agreed that, while the drama had started with promise and had chosen lead actors with discernible talent, by the second instalment, it had rather lost its way and become a bit of a joke. The Scotsman described it as lurching from ‘schlock romance’ to ‘a clever pastiche of The Great Escape’. The Daily Mail was more scathing and declared that by its conclusion, it had ‘degenerated into a rather silly melodrama capped by a soppy ending’.
For Tom, though, the experience had given him a chance to try something different from his regular roll-call of villains and maladjusted characters and he remained as determined as ever to make his work shine. He has often asserted that his job is to observe and then depict, not to offer comment. ‘I just came to tell a story and be part of a story’ he said of his time on Colditz. ‘There’s no wrong, really, there’s just bad acting and then there’s convincing acting. And somehow I’d like to do the work.’
If you are a Hardy superfan who feels the need to watch everything he’s ever been in – and he has a dedicated following of ardent admirers who do – you might just want to skip the film EMR when filling your online shopping cart with Hardy goodies. While it’s a perfectly watchable conspiracy story with an interesting twist, Tom’s appearance in it is brief, to say the least. In fact, if you acquired it specifically because his name is in the credits, you would be more than a little disappointed. For the sake of completeness, it is necessary to record that, in 2004, this independent film was released and Tom had a role in it – there is little more to say than that.
The year of 2004 had, however, been deemed by the media to be the start of a new era in British film. A slew of UK talent was attracting attention from across the Atlantic thanks to a succession of small-budget films that had performed well stateside. This was great for young actors such as Tom who were looking to gain more exposure and good news for Brit flicks looking to attract big investment.
It would be hard to find a more British film than Layer Cake. The book on which the film is based was the debut novel of JJ Connolly, and it led reviewers to declare him the new voice in British crime fiction. Set in gangland London in the nineties, the story is narrated by a nameless, low-key drug dealer aged 29 who is desperately trying to extricate himself from the game before he reaches 30.
In 2001, a copy of the book was sent to SKA Films, the production company of Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn (the director/producer dream team behind Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). Originally, it was Ritchie who agreed to adapt the story for the screen and Vaughn undertook his usual role of raising the finance to make the picture. However, after delays in securing the rights to make Layer Cake, Ritchie became too busy with other projects to be able to commit to directing it. Vaughn was already heavily involved with the film creatively and was understandably reluctant to hand over the directorial reins to a third party, so he opted to make the film his directorial debut. It was a challenge for him as, prior to Layer Cake, had only been involved in the production side of movies; now, he needed to cut his teeth on the creative aspects of film-making.
It was JJ Connolly himself who adapted the book into the film’s screenplay, and shooting took place over the summer of 2003. Cast in the main role of the nameless narrator (listed simply as XXXX in the film’s credits) was Daniel Craig. At this stage, Craig was a reasonably well known character actor but had not yet attached himself to the juggernaut Bond franchise. ‘When I first met Matthew he fired me up about the film, and I read the script in one sitting,’ enthused Craig to Nick Curtis of the Evening Standard.
The film was, in fact, awash with a host of familiar and brilliant British actors: Michael Gambon, Kenneth Cranham, Dexter Fletcher and Jamie Foreman, to name a few. Prior to winning the part of Tammy in Lay
er Cake, Sienna Miller had probably been best known for her role as Jude Law’s real-life girlfriend. In this movie, she proved that she could be so much more than that. There are also two trusted sidekicks who work as part of XXXX’s close-knit team. One is Clarkie, the part played by Tom, who is described in the opening scenes of the film as having a double first in Industrial Chemistry from Cambridge. The other is Terry, played by Tamer Hassan, who provides the brawn to complement Clarkie’s brains.
Another, uncredited, star of the film is London itself. Those who call London home and love the familiar sights of their city were delighted to see it make a significant contribution to the atmosphere of the film. Locations that were used for various parts of the story were mews houses in Kensington (XXXX’s home), The Regency Café in Victoria (where Morty exacts a violent attack) and the St Martin’s Lane hotel in Covent Garden (a memorable scene, where Tammy appears in all her lingeried glory, much to male movie-goers’ delight).
The poster campaign rolled out just prior to Layer Cake’s cinematic release was nothing if not striking. The artwork had been the brainchild of advertising executive Trevor Beattie and, if you weren’t already familiar with the story, seemed somewhat cryptic. Rather than featuring any of the stars of the film, the posters instead carried an image of a yellow Range Rover with an iron perched on the bonnet, a scorch mark around the iron clearly visible. The producers, Sony, whom Vaughn had persuaded to come on board, apparently disliked the posters but they seemed to intrigue British cinema-goers and were successful in enticing them to go and see the film. And, of course, once you’d watched the film, you could rest smug in the knowledge that you were one of those who understood the meaning of the campaign artwork.
Tom Hardy Page 6