Patrick Stewart admits he was certain Tom Hardy’s career would never take off after starring with him in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis.
Patrick Stewart has just published a memoir, titled ‘Making It So’, which chronicles the actor’s vast and impressive career.
One of the highlights is Stewart’s recollection of making 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, as detailed here by Insider. The actor didn’t have many good things to say about the film itself, but did remember the actor who played the film’s villain.
“And ‘Nemesis,’ which came out in 2002, was particularly weak,” Stewart writes in his memoir. “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.”
File that one under the “Things I Had Completely Forgotten About”. Hardy did in fact play Shinzon, a clone of Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard in the film. At the time, he wasn’t the global superstar we know him as now, but a scrappy young actor from East Sheen.
Hardy has been known to be a particularly intense performer and Stewart says Hardy rarely socialised with his fellow actors.
“Tom wouldn’t engage with any of us on a social level,” Stewart writes. “Never said, ‘Good morning,’ never said, ‘Goodnight,’ and spent the hours he wasn’t needed on set in his trailer with his girlfriend.”
Practising his lines, we’re sure.
“He was by no means hostile — it was just challenging to establish any rapport with him,” the actor adds.
Hilariously, Stewart remembers thinking Hardy would become yet another actor swallowed by the big cogs of Hollywood machinery.
“On the evening Tom wrapped his role, he characteristically left without ceremony or niceties, simply walking out of the door,” Stewart writes. “As it closed, I said quietly to Brent and Jonathan, ‘And there goes someone I think we shall never hear of again.’ It gives me nothing but pleasure that Tom has proven me so wrong.”
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Indeed he has. Hardy is one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation. His latest film, Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders has just premiered at film festivals and his performance is already garnering positive buzz. It’s another film where Hardy gets to do a wacky accent, this time he’s going for a Chicago one as he stars as the founding member of the Chicago Vandals, a motorcycle club.
Hardy is no stranger to big budget popcorn flicks either. Venom 3 is currently in pre-production and who could forget George Miller’s slice of fried gold, Mad Max: Fury Road in which Hardy starred as the titular hero.
