As an exercise in making a film from scratch, Scenes of a Sexual Nature is a standout example. It was made on a shoestring budget of £500,000 and was shot in less than three weeks – and just to make the whole process even more fraught, the script was completed just two weeks before shooting started. For producer/director Ed Blum it was a baptism of fire as, although he’d directed for television and made a short film, this was his first foray into a full-length feature.
The idea for the film was the brainchild of Blum and his friend, television writer Aschlin Ditta. Originally, Blum had wanted to write seven short story pieces but, between the two of them, they realised that if they made the stories about 10 or 12 minutes each, they could weave them together into a feature-length film. What he was certain about at this stage was that he wanted the action of the film to take place outdoors and that it was to be filmed in a simple and uncluttered way.
It is credit to Blum and Ditta that they succeeded in recruiting a stellar British cast for their film. Considering they were pitching to actors’ agents with an unfinanced script and a new director, this was a huge accomplishment. There were several factors that drew actors to the project, the primary one being the strength of the script – most loved the simplicity of the idea and the honesty of the writing. Blum observed: ‘To attract really good actors you need really good parts and material and the individual stories really appealed to them.’And one of the stars of the film, Adrian Lester, agreed, noting that in the script, ‘Nothing happens, but everything happens.’
Once a couple of big names had attached themselves to the film, interest snowballed and other actors were soon volunteering their services. Hugh Bonneville was amongst the first to come on board and, because Gina McKee had expressed a desire to work with him again, it wasn’t long before she agreed to appear as well. With two actors of their stature involved, more impressive names were soon added to the call sheet including one of the hottest properties at the time, Ewan McGregor. Other stars included Andrew Lincoln, Mark Strong, Catherine Tate and, of course, Tom Hardy. For Tom, one of the big draws was that, for his scenes, he would be predominantly working with Oscar-nominated Sophie Okonedo (with whom he would also be paired in the BBC’s Oliver Twist). Although the actors were paid Equity minimum for their work, on the upside the structure of the film meant they were only required for two or three days’ shooting in total, so could fit the project in around their other work commitments.
Although the title of the film suggests the content might be near the knuckle, it’s far from it. The ensemble piece covers the stories of seven unconnected couples over the course of one sunny summer afternoon on Hampstead Heath. The strands that make up the narrative paint pictures of people of varying ages and backgrounds, all at different points in their relationships. It’s a slightly contrived set up and the range of characters has an ‘all-inclusive’ feel to it: we are offered a glimpse of, for example, a gay couple, a happily divorced couple, a young married couple and a pair on a blind date.
Tom’s character is a young man called Noel who happens upon Anna (Sophie Okonedo) just as she has been dumped by her boyfriend Ludo (or Monopoly as Noel calls him during the course of their conversation). Noel is a lecherous but essentially harmless desperado in search of sex. He and Anna engage in a tit-for-tat conversation with Anna discharging barbed comments at this hapless character who has stepped into her line of fire. Ultimately, the confused and emotionally vulnerable Anna demands sex from Noel right then and there, on the heath, to which he at first nervously, but then enthusiastically, consents… only to have Anna reject him and walk off, leaving him with trousers around ankles and (to the delight of Hardy fans once again) bare bottom on display. This is the principal scene for Noel but we encounter him again as he loafs around the Heath seeking a woman who is as desperate as he is, only to be spurned each time.
Tom appreciated the chance to work alongside British acting royalty: ‘It was exciting because I knew that the standards were going to be high,’ he said. Perhaps because of the people he would be working alongside, he admitted he was nervous before he had to film his scenes, but that ultimately this was a positive thing as he can produce his best work when he is scared of the situation before him.
Whilst some of those who wrote about the film found the piece as a whole to be superficial and laboured, most picked out redeeming features from the individual performances. The luckless nature of Tom’s character and the humour to be found in his impetuosity make his scenes amongst the most memorable in the film. Tom was singled out for praise on more than one occasion, with the Evening Standard commenting that he was ‘pure comic relief.’ Toby Clements in the Telegraph stated: ‘Tom Hardy as the demented sexual predator is a delight.’
Light-hearted roles weren’t something readily associated with Tom Hardy, but in Scenes he proved that he could more than deliver – though Noel does have a slightly deranged aspect to him that we might more easily associate with a Tom Hardy character. In years to come, Tom would revisit comedy on a much grander Hollywood scale – but sadly to a less favourable reception than he got for this low-budget British flick.
The miniscule budget of Scenes stands in stark contrast to the £16 million budget of the next job that came Tom’s way. In 2007, the disaster movie Flood dramatised what would happen if the Thames Barrier were to be breached by a huge surge of water. Flood was based on a book written by Richard Doyle, who believed that the rising water levels caused by global warming were a serious threat to the capital. He wrote the book in 2003, having spent two-and-a-half years studying issues of climate change and its effect on weather patterns.
The film was made by UK production company Power, in association with both South African and Canadian production companies. It was shot over 11 weeks in South Africa and on location in London. The big names attached to it were Robert Carlyle, who plays a marine engineer, Tom Courtney who takes on the role of his estranged meteorologist father and David Suchet who plays the deputy prime minister.
Tom plays Zack, one of a pair of London Underground workers caught up in the mayhem. His part in the film consists mostly of chasing around dark tunnels underneath the city whilst pursued by furious surges of water – or being semi submerged in the water once it has caught up with him. As the characters are a pair, the action is nicely set up for one of them to come to a watery end while the other tries in vain to rescue him – but which one will it be?
In an effort to arouse interest in the film, publicity shots were released showing familiar London landmarks partially below water. The distributors refused to show the film to the press before it opened to the public in August 2007 – it had been rushed out to cinemas to take advantage of the fact that Britain was suffering an incredibly wet summer. This was a rather illogical move and, as the Daily Record pointed out: ‘Why would we want to subject ourselves to more torrential rain in the name of entertainment?’
The film had its television debut on ITV1 in May 2008. TV reviewer Nancy Banks-Smith opened her critique with: ‘When you feel lazy, there’s a lot to be said for tosh, and tosh is available by the bucketful in Flood.’
Oh well, Tom, you can’t win them all! Aquatic disaster films have a habit of sinking without trace. Waterworld, anyone?
Though Scenes of a Sexual Nature had been a masterclass in how to turn around a film on a sixpence, the Old Vic’s 24-hour gala was more akin to the ‘shotgun’ theatre that Tom had been involved in with his own company. Since 2004, actor Kevin Spacey had been in place as the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London. The idea for the 24 Hour Plays Celebrity Gala had evolved there under his guardianship to become an annual event. Its purpose was to raise money for the theatre’s Old Vic New Voices development programme, which showcased new writing.
The line-up of household names was announced the month prior to the gala and, as well as Tom, included the likes of Tamzin Outhwaite, Dominic West, Patricia Hodge and Hollywood star Vince Vaughan. The object of the exercise was for the cast
to perform six plays, written from scratch at the theatre in the space of 24 hours – not too much to ask, then!
The proceedings began at 10pm on Saturday, 7 October 2006, when the actors involved came together to develop six short plays – which would then be penned overnight by writers such as Colin Teevan and Snoo Wilson, amongst others. The plays were then rehearsed by the assembled actors from 8am on the Sunday morning – and finally performed in front of an audience of about 1,000. Talking to the Evening Standard about the event, Kevin Spacey said: ‘The 24 Hour Plays is one of the most thrilling and terrifying experiences an actor can have in a theatre. It’s an adrenaline rush like no other and a great event for the audience.’
The fundraiser was a huge success and raised £110,000, as well as allowing the actors involved to experience a whole new way of performing – and have a lot of fun into the bargain. Once they had done their bit for charity, the thespians repaired to the Riverbank Plaza Hotel for a celebratory party.
The charity gala wasn’t Tom’s only performance in front of a live audience at this point in his career. In January 2007, Nicholas Hytner staged his modern interpretation of George Etherege’s Restoration comedy, The Man of Mode, at the National Theatre. The central character of the play is a rake called Dorimant who, it is believed, Etherege based on the second Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot, a libertine and writer of bawdy poetry. Tom was to play Dorimant, who spends the play juggling the women in his life, and alongside him in the cast were Rory Kinnear as Sir Fopling Flutter and Hayley Atwell as Belinda.
In modernising the 17th century play, the action was transported to a present-day London. Language and references were brought up to date: instead of letters arriving by hand, they came via email; instead of characters taking carriage rides, they took taxis. Costumes too were contemporary; in an online promotional film for the production (perhaps designed to reach out to theatregoers who might have felt that Restoration Comedy would ordinarily not be for them), Tom can be seen looking sultry in a slick, dark suit while other members of the cast strut their stuff in either glamorous, sexy attire, or not much attire at all.
Modern reworkings of plays from bygone centuries are often well received. For example, Carlo Goldoni’s 1743 play The Servant of Two Masters was adapted by Richard Bean to become One Man Two Guv’nors. Bean replaced the period Italian setting with Brighton in 1963 and the play enjoyed a successful West End run in 2012, with James Corden in the starring role. Would the new staging of The Man of Mode be a hit?
Prior to opening, The Man of Mode was singled out as a highlight of forthcoming cultural attractions in the press, with the prospect of Tom playing a sexy cad generating quite a bit of excitement in theatreland. Paul Taylor stated in the Arts and Book Review that he was ‘salivating’ at the thought of Tom, ‘an actor who oozes sex and cockiness’ taking the lead role in Hytner’s production. Patricia Nicol in the Sunday Times concurred, proclaiming: ‘At the National, a draw for all right-thinking women will be the dangerously charismatic Tom Hardy as Etherege’s Man of Mode.’
However, when the play did open, it was greeted with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Many felt that the modern trappings were overdone, and that the abundant humour to be found in the script had been underplayed; it was ‘long on cool but short on comedy,’ The Express declared. Meanwhile, on the flipside, Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail deemed the modern slant ‘strikingly successful’.
For once, it was not Tom who was lavished with the praise of the critics but Rory Kinnear. Opinions on Tom’s performance were divided and it seemed that – unthinkable though this may seem – some who saw the play found the sight of Tom’s toned and decorated torso a distraction rather than an attraction. Most of the critics agreed that Kinnear stole the show, which was unfortunate as Dorimant was the central role and all eyes should have been on him. Christopher Hart in the Sunday Times lamented that, alongside Kinnear’s performance ‘…poor Tom Hardy, as Dorimant, seems to shrink into insignificance as the play progresses’, while Nicholas de Jongh felt that Tom’s performance fell short of a completely faithful portrayal of the character: ‘He catches Dorimant’s narcissism but none of his exploitative nastiness.’
In fairness, Tom had made no secret of how challenging he had found the role. It was obvious why he had been cast: in looks and demeanour he was a perfect fit for a charming seducer. He admitted, though, that he struggled with trying to find a way into the text. Having never had to get to grips with the language of a restoration drama before, he’d really had his work cut out. Ordinarily more at home with scripts that required him to have a brooding, edgy presence he now had to tackle more complex and florid dialogue. At the time the play was written, ‘people knew how to speak a sentence as if they were writing, and they talked at high speed. I’m more of the grunting and nodding type so I’ve had a really big mountain to climb,’ he explained to the Daily Telegraph in February 2007. ‘At first, I found Etherege absolutely impenetrable. His wit is as difficult to understand as Latin.’
Mediocre reviews from theatre critics are one thing, but Tom’s performance in The Man of Mode was on the receiving end of some rather more personal criticism. It came in the form of a letter from one of his teachers from Drama Centre. The letter was critical of the production of The Man of Mode as a whole and maintained that the play had not been interpreted as he felt it should be. Furthermore, according to Tom, the letter went on to state ‘you are not a star’. Speaking to the Telegraph, Tom was understandably defensive. ‘I decided against contacting my teacher because it was enough to know that I had worked at the National and he never f*****g would.’
With the benefit of hindsight, the statement ‘you are not a star’ was an ill-judged one. Though he had thus far only achieved a fraction of what he was capable of, the momentum behind Tom was building steadily. He had been given opportunities to learn from a host of experienced actors alongside whom he had been lucky enough to work, and he now had a good solid body of television work behind him. He’d taken on interesting character roles and shown he could turn his hand to comedy. But he was just about to find the characters with whom he could really make his mark. Bring on the bad boys.
CHAPTER SIX
TOUGH GUY
‘I’ve cornered the market on the old psychos and weirdos,’ Tom observed in conversation with Alan Carr on his Channel 4 chat show at the start of 2011, and there’s certainly no arguing with that! Since 2007, Tom had played a host of villains, madmen and sociopaths, from Bill Sikes to Charles Bronson. Prior to that, he’d been working solidly and accumulating varied but unremarkable character roles for his CV. The point at which people started to remember his name, though, was when he showed just how well he could play bad. As he put it: ‘No one’s ever sat up when I’ve played someone nice or easy to watch.’ In years gone by he’d brought his brand of intense and brooding menace to a relatively small arena on the London stage; he now stood poised to expose his dark side to the wider world of film and television audiences. Tom had been biding his time and was about to show what he was really capable of.
His first excursion into the darkness came with a role in a grisly horror film, Waz. In fact, the real title of the film was actually W Delta Z, but the use of the Greek letter to symbolise delta led to the film commonly being referred to as Waz. The significance of the title is made clear once the film gets underway: the equation is carved onto the skins of the victims of a recent spate of serial killings in New York, where the action takes place. The formula, it transpires, is in fact the Price Equation, a mathematical translation of the theory of natural selection. When used in the framework of the film’s narrative, it refers specifically to the choice of either killing a loved one or being killed yourself. So far, so horrific.
Though set in New York, the film was mostly shot in Belfast and boasted a bizarre mixture of acting talent in its cast. Weary cop Eddie Argo is played by Stellan Skarsgard (usually the actor of choice for director Lars von Trier), and his rookie sidekick, Helen, by for
mer Australian soap actress Melissa George. The only concession to a big Hollywood name comes in the form of actress Selma Blair who is, as ever, utterly convincing as the victim of an attack by brutal gang and who exacts her revenge on them one by one. The gang of hoods is headed up by Pierre Jackson (Tom Hardy) and also includes former So Solid Crew member Ashley Walters, who plays Daniel. Rounding off the eclectic cast is quirky actor and comedian Paul Kaye, who plays the scientist proponent of a gene theory derived from W Delta Z.
One of the themes explored in the film is the blurring of the boundary between good and evil. Most of the characters are shown to be capable of both: Eddie is driven by the desire to catch the bad guys but we question his grasp of right and wrong as the film explores some of his actions and the motives behind them. Gang member Daniel is morally ambiguous too: he is essentially a good person but is caught up on the fringes of the gang’s despicable deeds. Though we would like to think there is nothing redeeming about violent gang leader Pierre, even he is given a chance to show his human side via his relationship with his grandmother. In one scene, he is seen on the phone to her, saying he loves her, just seconds before carrying out what he believes to be a revenge shooting.
Tom’s looks, his swagger and his dominant presence on screen all made him credible as this nasty piece of work. The teeth that had once been his downfall were now just part of the appeal. Always wanting to do his job to the best of his ability, Tom was able to draw on the well of darkness he seemed to be able to divine when he needed to. He did, however, recognise that digging so deep for a part had its pitfalls. ‘Once I start work, I’m a bit of a dick in this character. It’s very hard to pull him back… he’s a nutter.’
Tom Hardy Page 9