The director Tom Hardy admitted to “rubbing up the wrong way”
Throughout his career, Tom Hardy has proven that he’s one of the most respected actors of his generation. The London-born star has featured in some of the most excellent film and TV productions of the 21st century, including Black Hawk Down, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Inception and The Dark Knight.
With that kind of admiration and quality to his filmography, Hardy has naturally been afforded the opportunity to collaborate with some of the most significant directors in the business, such as Ridley Scott, George Miller and Christopher Nolan, to name but a few.
However, while Hardy has indeed worked with several of the best and biggest filmmakers in the movie industry, that’s not to say that he’s actually enjoyed collaborating with each and every one of them. Hardy delivered one of his most memorable performances in 2008’s Bronson, but things did not go down very well with its direction.
The biographical prison film about Charles Bronson was directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, who once admitted that he’d actually wanted Jason Statham to take on the lead role rather than Hardy. He told IndieWire, “I really tried to get Jason, but he loved our meeting and then got the script and was like, ‘Yeah man, I don’t know what to tell you.’ It didn’t turn out that way, which was probably the right thing to do.”
Guy Pearce was also considered for the role before Refn eventually settled on Hardy. However, even the initial meet-up between the actor and director did not go smoothly, and it became clear that the two were not going to get on very well during the film’s production.
Refn said of the first meeting with Hardy, “I don’t drink alcohol, and he was an ex-alcoholic, and we met at a wine bar in London, which is the worst place you could meet in. And I don’t think we very much liked each other, so that was that.”
Hardy admitted to both he and Refn “rubbing each other the wrong way” and continuing to do so in a conversation with Interview. Still, Hardy was committed to the project and wanted it to be a success. He added, “It’s often the way with collaborations when you work with desperately individual people and then put them together as a team, there are going to be fireworks or disgruntlement, and we had our fair share of disagreements, but having said that I loved working with Nic and I would love to work with him again.”
However, by the time the movie was said and done, Hardy had changed his stance, admitted that he had no intention of ever working with the Danish filmmaker again, and so far has stood true to his word, saying in a Reddit AMA session, “I think he’s better off where he is, doing well without me.”
