Tom Hardy: last year, he was named outstanding newcomer to the London stage. This year, he's hoping the accolades will follow him across the Atlantic - Movie Tip - Brief Article

Tom Hardy has been working in Hollywood for three years, but if he's not yet a recognizable face, it's because he was covered in mud in Black Hawk Down (2001), tucked beneath a helmet in Band of Brothers (2001), and masked in a bald wig and ghostly makeup in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002).

But that's about to change. Over the coming months, the 26-year-old Brit will be appearing prominently--and perceptibly--in as many as five new films, including this month's medieval drama The Reckoning, with Paul Bettany and Willem Dafoe, and the upcoming thriller Layer Cake, co-starring English heavies Daniel Craig and Michael Gambon.

Why the sudden explosion? "I was doing all this live-fast, die-young stuff, which was ultimately about not taking responsibility," Hardy recalls. "Last year I got serious." He's not exactly a poster boy for puritan living, but in addition to yielding the backlog of movies now beginning to hit theaters, his newfound work ethic has also led to his recent copping of London's coveted Evening Standard Theatre Award for Outstanding Newcomer for his work in two plays in 2003.

Preparing to film Golden Man, Hardy has come full circle. He'll play Elizabethan bad-boy genius Christopher Marlowe, a man who "lived very hard and died very young."

Mark Simon Burk writes screenplays and fiction.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group