Tom Hardy is one of those actors who seems to get enveloped by his roles. While he doesn’t necessarily go through some of the wild physical transformations that we tend to see from a Gary Oldman or Johnny Depp, Hardy never sounds like the same character twice. His accent in The Revenant may be his most bizarre yet. What may be even stranger, however, is where he got the inspiration for the voice: a 1980’s Oliver Stone movie.
Apparently Tom Hardy is a big fan of Tom Berenger's character from the 1986 Vietnam War drama Platoon. He told Yahoo Movies that he used the character of Sergeant Barnes as the basis for the voice. It’s an interesting choice, as it doesn’t appear he chose the voice because of any connection that Hardy saw between the two characters. He simply liked the character, and so he wanted to pay it a little tribute. Hardy admits that the voice took on a life of its own after he started with it, so you’d be forgiven for not noticing any similarities. Hardy says that making the voices of his characters different is intentional, as it’s part of his attempt to transform into each role. Apparently if his characters sounded the same, he wouldn’t be working hard enough.
From the smooth-talking Eames in Inception to the growling voice of Max Rockatansky in Mad Max: Fury Road, Tom Hardy is a man of many voices. Probably his most famous voice is that of Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, though that’s not necessarily for complementary reasons. The character was barely intelligible through most of the film, though he still had an utterly amazing accent. A native of London, Hardy’s normal speaking voice sounds entirely different from virtually any voice he’s ever done on screen. You can check it out in the interview below where he talks about his Revenant accent.
Hardy is currently working on a new miniseries, called Taboo which will be out later this year. It’s set in 1813 and will include Hardy as an adventurer who attempts to build his own shipping empire to compete with the East India Company. Playing a world traveler in the 1800’s should give Hardy lots of interesting accents to play with. We can’t wait to hear what he sounds like in this one.
Do you have a favorite Tom Hardy voice? Let us know below.
