20 Things You Didn't Know About The Dark Knight Rises

9. Bane's Voice Was Based On Bare-Knuckle Boxing Champion Bartley Gorman

The Dark Knight Rises
Warner Bros.

By far the most distinctive aspect of Tom Hardy's Bane is the uniquely eccentric voice Hardy employs: a howlingly deep vocal tenor with ambiguous origins.

But Hardy confirmed in interviews that he actually based the voice on Irish bare-knuckle boxing champion Bartley Gorman. He said:

"[Gorman] was a bare knuckle fighter, a Romani gypsy. So I wanted to underpin the Latin, but a Romani Latin opposed to Latino."

Amusingly, reports emerged in 2012 that Hardy's vocal performance was actually re-mixed, due to audiences complaining about the poor, incomprehensible quality of his dialogue when the film's prologue sequence was debuted in front of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.