20 Things You Didn't Know About Mad Max: Fury Road
16. Miller Was Ahead Of The Curve On Tom Hardy
2015’s a big year for Tom Hardy: Child 44 may have sunk without a trace at the box office but Hardy’s performance certainly wasn’t one of the film’s issues, and his roles in The Revenant and Legend could well see him enter the as yet unfamiliar territory of major awards buzz. (How that’s not happened already is something of a mystery.)
And then there’s Mad Max: Fury Road. The financial forecasts are misty at the minute but a healthy take seems likely, particularly in light of the exceptional reviews and universally positive word of mouth. As such, it could plunge Hardy into a sparsely populated pool of names that can open a movie, but he was still a well-kept secret when George Miller deemed him the perfect successor to Mel Gibson.
Hardy’s breakout roles in Inception, Warrior and The Dark Knight Rises were still on the horizon when Miller discovered, “someone who was utterly abandoned in his work.” On meeting the actor for the first time, the director felt he embodied the stoic but deadly soul Gibson brought to the original trilogy:
”They both have a darker, dangerous side. With that tension, there is a sense of unpredictability.”