Tom Hardy is one of my favorite actors of all time. Some of the roles he plays show exactly how hard he works as a performer. Here’s a quick list of some of the popular films he’s starred in:
- Legend
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The Revenant
- Warriors
We’ve put together this incredible collection of the best Tom Hardy quotes of all time:
55 Admirable Tom Hardy Quotes
1. “A lot of people say I seem masculine, but I don’t feel it. I feel intrinsically feminine. I’d love to be one of the boys but I always felt a bit on the outside. Maybe my masculine qualities come from overcompensating because I’m not one of the boys.” – Tom Hardy
2. “I don’t fight really. I try not to fight, actually. I try not to react. I’m a Buddha floating on a lily pad.” – Tom Hardy
3. “I had no immediate knowledge of the world or Batman at all. I’m quite incubated. I just keep myself to myself and my dog.” – Tom Hardy
4. “I think I had only been working nine months when I got ‘Star Trek,’ and it was huge. It was very overwhelming. So that opened my eyes a bit at an early age, kind of how not be frightened when walking into a responsibility of something like that.” – Tom Hardy
5. “I’d learned how to lie and manipulate from an early age so a combination of that, desperation, having to have my own fridge and my umbilical cord back…I had to go out into the world. Then some angel somewhere said: “Have you considered going to drama school?” And this sounded like the solution to all of my problems.” – Tom Hardy
6. “I’m not interested in walks in the parks. Anything difficult that people think I couldn’t play, I’m straight at it. If they say ‘Tom, don’t put your hand in the fire’, you know I’ll be coming out of casualty an hour later with third-degree burns and bandages up my arms.” – Tom Hardy
7. “It’s funny in that because it is acting, and playing pretend, but I didn’t see myself being synonymous with these tough-guy roles. That’s not really me. I love acting. There was Bane, Warrior, Bronson, and now the Krays. I’m just surprised to be working, mate. Whatever gets me through the door.” – Tom Hardy
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8. “Spirituality seems to me to be for those who’ve been through hell.” – Tom Hardy
9. “There’s two types of acting: convincing and not convincing. People describe me as intense. It’s because I care. I am a pain in the ass because I care. Do I know what I’m doing? No. Do I have the best of intentions? Yes. Does that lead to hell? Sometimes.” – Tom Hardy
10. “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” – Tom Hardy
11. “And I like people. I like to know what you’re really up to. I’m a bit of a nosey busybody. Why do they do the things they do? Why are they prepared to do the things they do to get what they want? When? Where? Who?” – Tom Hardy
12. “I don’t like it when people say, “Well, you should have expected that when you accepted the jb as an actor. When you go to drama school, no one gives you a class on fame. Just treat people how you wish to be treated. Whether I’m married or not married, people will find out. But it’s also not something I’m going to offer.” – Tom Hardy
13. “I hate publicists and publicity. But I love people.” – Tom Hardy
14. “I think it’s important that you always transform if you can. That’s what I was trained to do. You try and hide yourself as much as you can – that’s the key to longevity.“ – Tom Hardy
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15. “I’m from a nice, suburban, idle-class family, but my tattoos remind me where I’ve been.” – Tom Hardy
16. “I’m very sensitive. Because my mum was my primary emotional caregiver growing up, I found myself being pinned into dresses, darting her dresses, choosing her high heels for the evening or what to wear. I’m very much a mommy’s boy” – Tom Hardy
17. “My father came from an intellectual and studious avenue as opposed to a brawler’s avenue. So I had to go further afield and I brought all kinds of unscrupulous oiks back home – earless, toothless vagabonds – to teach me the arts of the old bagarre.” – Tom Hardy
18. “Thanks for all the wonderful paintings and drawings and writings. I am very honoured to have your support, and love you for the energy and the inspiring work and comments that you bring to the table.” – Tom Hardy
19. “Vanity is normal in performers. Does it bother other people? All the time. But nine times out of ten, that says more about them than you.” – Tom Hardy
20. “As actors, we have the opportunity to work with many directors. Directors only work with themselves and other actors. They never know what it is like to work with another director. So that relationship that one has with a director is entirely always the king.” – Tom Hardy
21. “I find crying difficult. It takes a long time for me to go. And I won’t know what will send me. I’m quite sentimental. If my son tells me he loves me that will make me cry. Mr. Holland’s Opus, unbelievably, broke me. A random anomaly. Bambi would probably do me.” – Tom Hardy
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22. “I have a very busy head. I have inside voices that I have learned to contain.” – Tom Hardy
23. “I want to dispel that it’s all about celebrity-ism, I’m fucking bored of people looking at whose shoes are interesting and what hat is interesting. Storytelling is very important to people, it comforts them, unite us, cheers us up, we can affect change with these arts. We need to be entertained to connect.” – Tom Hardy
24. “I’m from East Sheen, I went to public school where I learned Latin at the age of nine, and certain expectations were made of me to go to St. Paul’s, Oxbridge maybe, and all that kind of thing. And I failed systematically to meet the mark – who I am and what I should have been are two very different things.” – Tom Hardy
25. “In the end there was nothing else I could do. I had a busy head and I didn’t really want to do things that I found boring. The only thing that kept my attention was to play and have fun and manipulate. I’ve always been a liar, always been able to manipulate. I pretty much get whatever I want.” – Tom Hardy
26. “My job is to show and tell. If I get better at showing and telling then presumably I get hired more.” – Tom Hardy
27. “The only thing I can do is wipe my arse, brush my teeth, turn up and do the best work I can.” – Tom Hardy
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28. “We are survivors. We control the fear. And without the fear, we are all as good as dead.” – Tom Hardy
29. “Fame and stuff like that is all very cool, but at the end of the day, we’re all human beings. Although what I do is incredibly surreal and fun and amazing and I’m really grateful for it, I don’t believe my own press release, do you know what I mean?” – Tom Hardy
30. “I get hired more then I get seen more. I get seen more then maybe celebrity and fame happens but at the end of the day there’s no difference between my five dollar performance and my fifty million dollar performance.” – Tom Hardy
31. “I identify with having strong, powerful female influences in my life. Do you think that women are fairly represented in screenplays, film, TV, and theatre today? Or do you think there should be better parts for women than just girlfriend and wife or lover? Because I’m bored with that.” – Tom Hardy
32. “I wanted my dad to be proud of me, and I fell into acting because there wasn’t anything else I could do, and in it I found a discipline that I wanted to keep coming back to, that I love and I learn about every day.” – Tom Hardy
33. “I’m going to fail to hit the mark I’ve put up before me because it’s not possible to hit it. I want to be the best at what I do so I’ve got to get over myself already because that’s never going to happen. I ain’t ever going to be God.” – Tom Hardy
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34. “It doesn’t matter who you are. What matters is your plan.” – Tom Hardy
35. “No matter how much you can prepare for [auditions], there’s nothing worse than the anticipation. It’s always the killer of everything. The actuality of doing something is normally a lot easier than the waiting for it.” – Tom Hardy
36. “There’s a long way to go on that, but I do believe that the time is now.” – Tom Hardy
37. “We’re all flawed human beings and we all have a cauldron of psychosis which we have to unravel as we grow older and find the way we fit in to live our lives as best as possible.” – Tom Hardy
38. “I didn’t understand how you could do something which is so much fun and be so miserable doing it.” – Tom Hardy
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39. “I guess if I had fifty million dollars I could spend more time at home…” – Tom Hardy
40. “I mean there I was. One moment in Wandsworth Police Station on the way to Wormwood Scrubs, looking at 14 years, to this!” – Tom Hardy
41. “I was ashamed of not having any relevance… not being comfortable in my own skin. Huge ego, very low self-esteem. A lot of anger and rage and fear. It would be, ‘I’m not going to feel frightened so I’ll strangle the biggest guy in the bar and then no one will f**k with me’. I’ll get tattoos and people will know I’m not afraid to hurt myself and they’ll be like warning signs.” – Tom Hardy
42. “I’m here to challenge myself and to see whether I can shape-shift in an environment that’s actually quite daunting, but which I think would be nice to shine a light into. The destination of any interesting drama is that you shine a light into a place that not many people know about.” – Tom Hardy
43. “It is not the violence that sets a man apart, it is the distance he is prepared to go.” – Tom Hardy
44. “Responsibility has a cost, and there’s no such thing as a perfection.” – Tom Hardy
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45. “There’s always a certain pride in getting a job done properly.” – Tom Hardy
46. “When I was nine, I ran in a school race, and I suddenly realized I was in the lead. I looked at the finish line, and just freaked out, then ran to the side as if I’d hurt myself. It was everything to do with the fear of success.” – Tom Hardy
47. “I don’t feel very manly. I don’t feel rugged and strong and capable in real life, not how I imagine a man ought to be. So I seek it, to mimic it and maybe understand it, or maybe to draw it into my own reality. People who are scary, they terrify me, but I can imitate them. I’m not a fighter. I’m a petite little bourgeois boy from London. I don’t fight, I mimic.” – Tom Hardy
48. “I had a huge imagination. My granddad says I was a bit of a Walter Mitty character.” – Tom Hardy
49. “I play Xbox. I have a little boy to look after. I have dogs. You know, I have things to do. I would love to be able to sit down and watch something like a movie. I watch my own movies because I have to.” – Tom Hardy
50. “I went entirely off the rails and I’m lucky I didn’t have some terrible accident or end up in prison or dead, because that’s where I was going. Now I know my beast and I know how to manage it. It’s like living with a 400 pound orangutan that wants to kill me. It’s much more powerful than me, doesn’t speak the same language and it runs around the darkness of my soul.” – Tom Hardy
51. “I’m never lost in a character, ever. Everything is absolutely articulated and worked out and there’s no room for error. The only thing there is room for is inspiration in the moment because you’ve done your homework up to that point….” – Tom Hardy
52. “It was always in the cards for Michael. It was always in the cards for him. I’m not surprised about him at all, because he was awesome. Me, I don’t know how I got here! I feel like I just came from delivering pizza and I got lucky.” – Tom Hardy
53. “So, somewhere between that acceptance and doing my homework and being competitive and having ambition and loving my job and observing and reflecting my society, that’s where I find the purpose. Because man needs purpose.” – Tom Hardy
54. “There’s no feeling of, ‘I’ve got to be the best in the world.’ I’m going to be the best I can. I tell myself, it’s only storytelling and it’s going to be OK and you love doing this. Pick any one of the reasons to do it and, for the next five minutes, enjoy that.” It’s one thing being on top, but knowing what to do while you’re there is something else. Do you milk it for everything it’s worth or try to be choosy in order to gain some longevity?” – Tom Hardy
55. “Within the creative arts you can create things and destroy things. Passion creates and destroys.” – Tom Hardy
Summary
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