Tom Hardy has been here before. The 48-year-old London-born star currently finds himself at the center of a swirling controversy over his conduct on the set of the crime drama Mobland. While reports that he was fired from the series have been roundly denied, it remains unclear whether or not he will return for the show’s third season.
Hardy is one of Britain’s most accomplished contemporary actors, but stories about producers, directors and co-stars having a hard time working with him are nothing new.
He has made a career out of portraying tough, driven characters, whether it be his memorable performance as the imposing villain Bane in 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises or his Oscar-nominated turn as the tracker John S. Fitzgerald in 2015’s The Revenant, but that toughness seems to extend to his off-screen persona, too.
While some of Hardy’s fellow actors have said they found him warm and cuddly, with his Venom co-star Michelle Williams once calling him a “puppy dog,” others aren’t so enamored. Animal analogies seem to abound when describing Hardy. His The Bikeriders scene partner Austin Butler said he pictured him as a “grizzly bear,” while Shia LaBeouf described him as a “gorilla on set.”
How did Hardy earn this fearsome reputation? Here’s a look back at his history of on-set scrapes and skirmishes.
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
One of Hardy’s earliest film roles saw him playing a clone of Patrick Stewart’s Starfleet captain Jean-Luc Picard in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis.
While there were no major bust-ups on set, it is notable that even at the very start of his career, Hardy was beginning to build a reputation for being reclusive and overly fond of his trailer.
In Stewart’s 2023 memoir Making It So, he recalled of the film: “I didn’t have a single exciting scene to play, and the actor who portrayed the movie’s villain, Shinzon, was an odd, solitary young man from London. His name was Tom Hardy. 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.”
For his part, Hardy has put his reluctance to mingle on the set down to his own nerves, telling Total Film: “I was terrified. Every day on that set, I was terrified – which worked for the character anyway. You can’t hide that, the camera will pick it up. I was genuinely out of my depth. The whole thing was, ‘How can I do this?’ I took it very seriously.”
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Lawless (2012)
By 2012, Hardy’s star was very much on the rise. The same year he starred as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, he also took on a leading role in the Nick Cave-penned Southern Gothic gangster film Lawless.
He was cast as the elder brother of Shia LaBeouf’s character, but the two men reportedly took sibling rivalry to an extreme. There were multiple stories about the pair fighting each other on set, although there were differing accounts of just how serious the scrapping really was.
At one point, Hardy claimed that LaBeouf had “knocked [him] out cold.” He added: “He’s a bad, bad boy. He’s quite intimidating as well. He’s a scary dude.”
However, LaBeouf said later that Hardy was merely joking, and that they’d gently tussled after Hardy walked in on LaBeouf and his girlfriend in a state of undress.
Director John Hillcoat, for his part, told a Reddit AMA that the pair “definitely” had a fight. “It escalated to the point where they had to both be restrained,” he said.
During a Hollywood Reporter roundtable, LaBeouf was asked who he had felt the most intimidated by on set and responded: “Probably Tom Hardy. Hardy is a bit of a gorilla on a set. Well, he runs the set. He’d pee in the corners. It’s his set, you know it when you get there. It doesn’t feel like a shared space, it feels like his space. And he’s a very good actor and also super-loving, but on a set, you’re in his church.”
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Arguably, Hardy’s most notorious on-set feud was the one that developed between him and his Mad Max: Fury Road co-star Charlize Theron.
Looking back at the film’s production several years later, Theron admitted that the pair “f***in’ went at it” while filming George Miller’s post-apocalyptic outback epic.
The South African star said she “felt threatened” by Hardy, and also became frustrated when he would delay production by turning up late. Once, after he was three hours late to set, she told producers they should “fine the f***ing c*** a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he’s held up this crew.”
In an interview with The New York Times, Hardy explained: “I think in hindsight, I was in over my head in many ways. The pressure on both of us was overwhelming at times. What she needed was a better, perhaps more experienced, partner in me. That’s something that can’t be faked. I’d like to think that now that I’m older and uglier, I could rise to that occasion.”
Theron continued: “In retrospect, I didn’t have enough empathy to really, truly understand what he must have felt like to step into Mel Gibson’s shoes. That is frightening! I think because of my own fear, we were putting up walls to protect ourselves instead of saying to each other, ‘This is scary for you, and it’s scary for me, too. Let’s be nice to each other.’ In a weird way, we were functioning like our characters: Everything was about survival.”
Mobland (2026)
Hardy’s recent troubles on the set of Mobland have reportedly once again centered around his not agreeing to leave his trailer. An unnamed source recently told The Hollywood Reporter that Hardy “refused to come out of his trailer for hours at a time.”
The source continued: “He kept the cast waiting, [which is] a power play. Keeping Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren and others waiting is career suicide, I would wager.”
Additionally, Puck News reported that Hardy was regularly late to set and “constantly asked to give notes on scripts.”
Those notes weren’t exactly welcomed by screenwriter Jez Butterworth, with a source telling Variety: “Often [Hardy’s] ideas are very sound. And he wants them taken seriously. Jez kind of hasn’t got the time to deal with those notes, so it becomes problematic.”
However, as reports of Hardy being sacked ahead of the show’s upcoming third season have been played down, Hardy has found an ally in Mirren, who has come to his support.
On Thursday, she shared a photo of Hardy on Instagram, writing: “Love you now and always, Helen.”
As tense as Hardy may have occasionally made life on set, his talent and charisma onscreen may well prove enough for all that to be ignored. As one source put it to Variety, Hardy may be “difficult, but he’s a movie star.”
