Who He Plays: Bane Who He Really Plays: Bartley Gorman, bareknuckle boxing champion So it's not strictly true that Tom Hardy lifted the The Dark Knight Rises' Bane wholesale from Bartley Gorman - this is one of the great actors of this generation after all, who creates his characters from the ground up - but Hardy and Christopher Nolan have both credited Gorman, the so-called 'King of the Gypsies', as a significant inspiration for Hardy's Bane. "There was a concern by the fans that Bane should be of Latin descent", explained Hardy. "Taking that into mind, I looked at original Latin, sort of Romany gypsies - there's a character, Bartley Gorman, a bareknuckle fighter, and that's where the accent comes from". It's an accent that is, as Nolan has said, "essential" to the character, the offbeat cadences suggesting an outsider with a long, storied history.