Ranking Tom Hardy’s 10 Best Performances (By How Much You Can Understand Him)

7. Warrior (2011)

A strong case could be made for this film being Hardy's real breakout role in the USA. While he had already been selected as a favourite actor by director Christopher Nolan and while he was pretty well known on the British side of the Atlantic, Hardy had not had a really meaty leading role in the States until Warrior burst into the public consciousness in 2011. In one of the finest Hollywood films of that year, Hardy was all phenomenal muscles, and sheer brutality in his moving depiction of marine deserter turned MMA fighter Tommy Riordan. But much like in Mad Max, Hardy€™s dialogue was necessarily limited for character development reasons and the thick Pennsylvanian drawl that he perfected meant that he continued to challenge audience€™s abilities to really understand his dialogue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6DDYCf80hw Luckily, the words were not entirely essential to Hardy€™s performance. His posture, his power, his expressions, and his rare flashes of tenderness meant that audiences could have muted every single word he said and still understood almost every facet of his character, while experiencing the rich character arc that Tommy undertakes in the film.