8 Genius Ways Actors Made Sure You Noticed Them In Movies

7. Tom Hardy Wore Special Shoes To Make Him The Same Height As Christian Bale

Dark Knight Rises Bane Batman
Warner Bros.

If you've ever seen Tom Hardy on the red carpet (or stood next to certain co-stars onscreen), you've probably noticed that he's quite a short guy, at least when compared to the perception that all Hollywood leading men need to be strapping chiselled dudes over six feet tall.

At five feet nine inches, the actor had a bit of trouble squaring up to Christian Bale - who stands at exactly six feet - while shooting The Dark Knight Rises, despite packing on an insane amount of muscle for his role as bald badass Bane. When studio execs requested that he be able to look Batman straight in the eyes during their many showdowns, Hardy used a clever trick that ensured his character would not be swallowed up by Bale's hulking shadow.

While the movie was shooting in mid-2011, it was reported that Hardy had been fitted with specially-made shoes that sported a three-inch height lift, allowing him to match Bale's towering presence.

The evidence of this is onscreen: look at any scene featuring Bane and Batman stood on level ground, and you can see that the two characters stand at almost exactly the same height, despite there being a three-inch gap between the two actors in real life.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!