Shia Lebeouf has cultivated one of the more interesting reputations in Hollywood in recent years. The actor and part-time performance artist has gotten up to some fairly unusual things in the past, to the point where it would be difficult to discount any story you heard about his exploits. However, one of the more interesting stories that's being going around for years is that he once knocked out Tom Hardy in a fight.
Back in 2012 Tom Hardy and Shia Lebeouf starred in Lawless and the story coming out of filming was that the two had not gotten along and actually been in a physical fight. It seems that Shia Lebeouf came out on top in the fight, as the story was Hardy had actually been knocked out.
In a recent appearance on First We Feast, Shia Lebeouf was asked about the story, and he now says the whole thing was blown out of proportion. Apparently, Lebouf and Tom Hardy got along quite well on the set, so much so that the two used to wrestle each other for fun. Apparently, this particular altercation started when Hardy interrupted Shia Lebeouf and his girlfriend while they were, uh, busy. According to the actor...
We used to wrestle all the time and he's a big fucking person, especially then, he was getting ready for Bane. He runs into the room, the girl I was with at the time was terrified and she's like, 'Ahhhh!' And she covered up and ran into the kitchen and I had nothing on, so now I'm naked on his shoulder, I'm in the hallway, we're wrestling around and naked ... and I got upset about it because he got the best of me, but I'm in this weird naked twisty position, like, his shits's over here, my shits's over here, and I'm like, ugh, don't.
If Tom Hardy wrestling a naked Shia Lebeouf wasn't enough, from there the struggle apparently got a little out of hand. It ended up moving near a staircase, which is when things went bad.
We wound up inching towards where the stairs were and he fell down the stairs and ended up hurting his back, so for the rest of the shoot, he told everybody I knocked him out but that wasn't the case. We were having some weird, like, cutie wrestling match.
Tom Hardy was absolutely the one that claimed he'd been knocked out by Shia Lebeouf, though the way Hardy told the story initially it certainly wasn't clear how on the level it was. However, Lawless director John Hillcoat had previously confirmed that there had, in fact, been a fight between them, so it all seemed to be true.
Instead, it seems that it was all really just a Tom Hardy joke that got blown somewhat out of proportion. Considering the joke as lasted for the better part of this decade, good joke.
