Patrick Stewart says “odd” Tom Hardy was “challenging” to work with
Patrick Stewart, the British thespian and institution, has explained why he found Tom Hardy difficult to act alongside.
Stewart is best known as Jeac-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and since the series ended, he’s reprised the role several more times. He returned for a formal season with CBS/Paramount’s Picard, which revisited the character almost 30 years after The Next Generation. In 2002, however, Captain Picard got the big-screen treatment with Star Trek: Nemesis, which saw the character facing off against villain Shinzon, played by a then up-and-coming Tom Hardy.
In his new memoir, Stewart has revealed that working with the young actor was “odd” and “challenging”. Recounting in Making It So, the actor explained his experience working on the movie, which he admitted to being “weak”.
However, a particularly illuminating moment comes from his descriptions of Hardy’s behaviour while working on the project. Stewart writes, “The actor who portrayed the movie’s villain, Shinzon, was an odd, solitary young man from London. His name was Tom Hardy.”
Continuing, the actor said, “Tom wouldn’t engage with any of us on a social level. Never said, ‘Good morning,’ never said, ‘Goodnight,’ and spent the hours he wasn’t needed on set in his trailer with his girlfriend,” before adding “He was by no means hostile – it was just challenging to establish any rapport with him.”
Stewart went on to describe how things ended when Hardy finished working on the movie, a moment usually celebrated by the cast and crew of a production. “On the evening Tom wrapped his role,” Stewart writes, “he characteristically left without ceremony or niceties, simply walking out of the door.”
Despite his initial reservations about the actor, Stewart clarified how glad he was to see Hardy’s success as an actor. “As it closed, I said quietly, ‘And there goes someone I think we shall never hear of again.’ It gives me nothing but pleasure that Tom has proven me so wrong.”
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