Tom Hardy's Most Bizarre Accents Ranked
Hero with a thousand faces, meet the actor with a thousand voices: Tom Hardy. Hardy is known for his marble-mouthed gangsters and his smooth-talking dream-weavers. He plays heroes, villains, and in the case of "Venom," both at once. Hardy is one of the most transformative, versatile actors working today because he's unafraid to make bold choices — and even bolder voices. Not that bold means bad, of course.
Some of the British actor's wackiest voices are simply accurate, like his oddly correct short A's as Chicago's own Janovec in "Band of Brothers." Accents are a large part of Hardy's acting power, whether he's playing characters ripped from real life or the Romulan Star Empire. Even Hardy's largely silent role as Max in "Mad Max: Fury Road" relied on deliberate vocal choices. "The toughest thing for me was to find Max's voice," Hardy explained to ET. "Max hadn't spoken for many, many years. So it was, I think, synchronistic with character."
The man clearly has range. Here, we're going to look at some of his accents, on an increasingly wild scale. Read on for Tom Hardy's most bizarre accents ranked.
14. Inception
Let's kick things off with our bizarre baseline: Tom Hardy doing a behaved, beautiful rendition of his "actual" scruffed-up posh accent for Eames, a mysterious forger in Christopher Nolan's 2010 dream heist film noir, "Inception." Everything about Eames is polished and controlled. Even when he purrs, "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling," to a fellow dream thief before firing off a massive weapon, Eames is one cool customer.
Consider Eames's elegant bit of retro-evening news Queen's English to be the dream version of Hardy's real voice: a more modern take on the dreamy, posh accents Hardy uses for more traditional period and romantic fare, like his royal role in "The Virgin Queen" — or his royal pain in "Wuthering Heights." In a WIRED interview with Andy Serkis, Hardy describes his own accent as a hybrid accent that he morphs based on the role. "And I affect it with all kinds of interesting variants in order to make myself seem interesting," Hardy said.
Just like Hardy admits to embellishing his own accent in real life, Eames seems to be putting on a show. The forger is good at manipulating the subconscious minds of others, but his accent also drops its formality at times with his fellow thieves. These momentary wavers in Eames's smooth-talking ways make his seemingly straightforward accent all the more interesting — and full of secrets.
13. Bronson
Tom Hardy plays larger-than-life British criminal Charlie Bronson in 2008's "Bronson." According to the movie, Bronson's initial seven-year jail sentence for petty theft balloons into a 30-something-year sentence served mostly in solitary confinement, due to Bronson's taste for hostage-taking. The movie is a cartoonish tone poem of violence and rage, but it also highlights Bronson's dehumanizing prison treatment — and one glorious humdinger of a mustache.
Hardy's Bronson looks like Freddie Mercury crossed with a Victorian circus strongman. He uses a Cockney accent that's half chimney sweep, half-demon — and, apparently, all true. "He really pulls Charlie off just the way he is," Stephen Gillen, Bronson's real-life ex-cell-mate, said upon viewing Hardy in the film.
Even Bronson himself approves of Hardy's portrayal. The men struck up a correspondence when Hardy was researching the role, and Bronson told The Times, "He is more like me than I am." To show his support, Bronson shaved off the most notorious mustache in Britain and sent it to Hardy. Bronson told WalesOnline, "Maybe the make-up artists on set can stick it on his top lip. If not, Tom can stick it in his pocket for luck." Sounds like a plan.
12. Stuart: A Life Backwards
In 2007's heart-wrenching buddy tragicomedy "Stuart: A Life Backwards," Tom Hardy plays another real-life character. This one is named Stuart Shorter, a young man with alcoholism who is also struggling with trauma, violence, and homelessness. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Alexander Masters, a writer — and Stuart's unlikely friend to the all-too-early end.
The movie is based on the book "Stuart: A Life Backwards" by Alexander Masters. It's a harrowing story, humanely (and humorously) told. There isn't much sentimentality on display here, but no cynicism, either. Hardy plays Stuart with a base accent that sounds almost like a child playing a posh uncle, but he does so without letting it go into cartoon territory.
Stuart's voice is lilting and idiosyncratic, and Hardy often has to play him drunk. Stuart's voice runs away with itself, pitching high when he's happy, and jamming up when he's upset. What could easily be a cheap piece of stunt vocal work becomes a compassionate and vivid vocal portrait in Hardy's portrayal.
11. Lawless
Tom Hardy in an American Prohibition crime thriller written by an Australian goth rocker? It's a match made in bizarro-world heaven. Hardy plays one of the bootlegging brothers Bondurant in 2012's "Lawless", written by the man with a "Peaky Blinders" red right hand himself, Nick Cave.
Hardy has a knack for playing real-life figures. The story of "Lawless" is based on some true tall tales. The movie dramatizes the events of the Great Franklin Country Moonshine Conspiracy through the lives of the Bondurant brothers, and their literally cutthroat world.
Hardy plays Forrest Bondurant with a low, throat-muffled twang somewhere between Michael Shannon and Michael Rapaport as Dewey Crowe in "Justified." When he delivers his mealy-mouthed warnings before a fight, his enemies have to lean in to make out his meaning. Of course, a rising weird accent tide raises all ships, and this is especially true (and entertaining) in the scenes Hardy shares with the eyebrow-free super bad guy Rakes, played by a bizarro Chicago-accented Guy Pearce going as hard as Hardy.
10. Locke
"Locke" strips away all other visual distractions to focus only on the man in the van — or a BMW X5. Tom Hardy plays Ivan Locke in 2013's "Locke", the story of a family man reckoning with a time he stepped out on his family, managing a huge work project from afar, and basically trying to be a better man at the end of an 80-minute car ride than he was at the beginning.
To some, Locke's accent sounds like a strangely musical, soft-spoken posh British one. But Hardy is doing his best Welsh accent. It's not an accent often given the big screen treatment. Bewilderingly, Hardy's Welsh becomes a bit Slavic at times, and Pakistani at others — like in the scene where he talks his assistant, Donal (Andrew Scott, using his own Irish accent) into handling a massive concrete pour on his own.
While Hardy isn't always consistent with his accents, there's a story behind why in "Locke." Hardy told WalesOnline he based Locke's accent on a seemingly Welsh guide who helped him do research for a different role in the Middle East, and later discovered the man wasn't Welsh at all, but English. He told WalesOnline "When my fiancee found out she went, 'Oh Tom, you idiot'." Idiot or not, "Locke" does give us Tom Hardy in his pseudo-Welsh accent saying the phrase "Cartwell's a donkey."
9. Warrior
Many Tom Hardy characters deal with life using their fists — and a mouth full of marbles. 2011's "Warrior" stars Hardy as Tommy Riordan, an emotionally traumatized Marine returning home to Pittsburgh to stake a claim for himself as an MMA champion. In order to reach his goals, Tommy has to work with his estranged brother, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), who has a different relationship with their abusive father (Nick Nolte) than Tommy does.
The metaphor of family fighting it out is a simple but effective one and made believable in gritty, early-aughts hyper-realism in large part due to the movie's accent work. Hardy's Tommy doesn't speak much, but when he does, he sounds like he just got punched in the neck. "Yo, I'll fight him!" he croaks out in the gym when talk of a hot-shot middleweight is brought up. Yeah, buddy. We get it. You'll fight everyone and everything, except the battle to make a therapy appointment -– and the phlegm in your throat.
Though the movie is set lower on the Eastern seaboard than Boston, Hardy's accent here sounds like it could easily pull voiceover double-duty for a very emotional Dunkin' Donuts commercial. Ben Affleck, watch the throne.
8. The Drop
Though Tom Hardy has range for days, he cooks with a full gas range when he's playing gangsters or starring in gangster-adjacent movies. As such, his wild accent heat is set to simmer in 2014's "The Drop." This crime drama has it all: a Dennis Lehane-penned script, a budding romance with a femme fatale that has a cute dog, and severed arms. Oh, and it also has Tom Hardy as Bob Saginowski, a soft-mouthed, soft-spoken Boston bartender with a past.
Bob works at a bar used for unofficially official mafia business. Hardy's accent game seems upped — even for him — perhaps because of the company he keeps in "The Drop." The movie stars "The Sopranos" star James Gandolfini in his final film role, long may he rest.
Hardy's Bob has a good heart and a Brooklyn baby voice that belies his own occasionally dangerous nature. The voice is believable, but intensely Movie Brooklyn. In Hardy's mouth, the line "they call it a drop bar" becomes "they cawl it a dwop bwa." It's a Brooklyn accent by way of a Gabagool meme, and it is glorious.
7. Legend
Boxing, gangsters, real-life characters, brutal violence, and spiffy suits — these Tom Hardy infinity stones combine to power double the accents in 2015's "Legend." In this stylish gangland drama from Brian Helgeland, Hardy plays Ronald and Reggie Kray, twin brothers with very different voices and quite different ways of doing crime in 1960s London.
"Reggie was a gangster prince of the east end. Ron Kray was a one-man mob," intones Reggie's long-suffering wife Frances (Emily Browning) in the movie's trailer. Reggie is princely, sure, with his slick hairstyle, nice suits, and propensity to handle his lust for crime with less muss and fuss than Ron. Still, for all Reggie's polish, he can't scrub the poor East London docklands from his higher-pitched accent. When Chazz Palminteri asks him to ice Ron, Reggie refuses: "I can't do that. He's my bruvva."
The truly bizarre accent at play here, though, is Hardy's voice for Ron. Ron speaks as if his entire nasal passage is stopped up with cotton, and he's very mad about it. It's giving Murder Beatle. What is also wild about "Legend" is that, while watching it, you would never guess Tom Hardy was just Tom Hardy — and not actual living, breathing, weirdly accented twins.
6. Child 44
Tom Hardy doesn't just do bizarre English and American accents. No, no. Or should we say, nyet, nyet. Hardy plays a detective in 2015's "Child 44", a 1950s Soviet thriller about unsolved child murders. Hardy also co-stars with fellow god-tier bizarre accent bro, Gary Oldman.
Hardy plays Leo Demidov, a Ministry of State Security (MGB) Agent who suspects, along with Oldman's character, that the MGB is covering up the actions of a Soviet serial killer. Even worse? This killer targets children, including the kid of Leo's love interest. Hardy works to take down the bad guy — and quite possibly, the State, in the process.
While "Child 44" has some solid thrills and performances, it doesn't necessarily stand up as well as other movies on this list. But anything could stand up in Hardy's Russian accent. It's thicker than a bowl of breakfast kasha, and richer than a bowl of borscht. It makes us long for a Russian accent-off between Hardy and "The Americans" star Matthew Rhys.
5. The Revenant
Step aside, Benoit Blanc. Tom Hardy as John Fitzgerald is in the house — er, bear-haunted woods. 2015 was a big year for Tom Hardy, and a big year for bear cinema. Alejandro G. Iñárritu's "The Revenant" walked so "Cocaine Bear" could run.
Incredibly inspired by true events (according to the official trailer), "The Revenant" is a Western survival epic that follows the plight of pelt-hunters in the 1800s, in particular a frontiersman (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the bad guy (Hardy) who thinks its best to finish him off after a bear attack leaves him near-dead. Fitzgerald thinks he's sorted his problems by killing the man and his son, and then moving things along to let the squirrel god sort it out.
Of course, what is dead doesn't always stay that way. Soon, Fitzgerald is pursued across the frozen Dakotas, lying through his teeth with a soft, southern-fried accent that is bizarrely understated as much as it is alien to Hardy's native tongue. Speaking and killing are Fitzgerald's superpowers, and his voice could easily belong to a fringe character on "The Righteous Gemstones."
4. Peaky Blinders
In a festival of accent work, the kaleidoscopic and cosmic Cockney accent Tom Hardy does for Alfie Solomons in "Peaky Blinders" takes home best in bloody show. "Is that just tittle tattle"? No. It's the truth. Yeah, it is.
Alfie is the Jewish gang king of Camden Town, a thorn in Tommy Shelby's (Cillian Murphy) side, as well as one of his least trustworthy allies. Alfie talks like he has a box of rocks in his mouth, but that box is holy, and sometimes covered in honey. Alfie's voice rumbles and rolls like the ocean waves, and spikes up in exclamation when treachery — or starlings — are about.
There are stretches where every word Alfie utters is bitten off but crystal clear. Just as often, entire stretches of speech are unintelligible ramblings. Half of Alfie's impassioned speeches are half-swallowed, and the other half are spat out at double speed, with enunciation only happening when Alfie damn well feels like it. How else would we expect Alfie to speak? He is a god, after all.
3. Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage
Tom Hardy's work in the "Venom" movies delivers two wild (and wildly different) accents for the price of one. Hardy plays New York journalist Eddie Brock, as well as Venom, the alien life-form who shares his body. Eddie is cowardly, evasive, and largely insecure in his life before Venom. Venom, on the other hand, is bold, honest, and all-powerful. He also loves a good snack.
The movies take full advantage of this odd couple, Jekyll and Hyde situation. As Eddie, Hardy's accent sounds like the cast of "Goodfellas" got dipped into a vat of Saturday morning cartoon acid and lived to tell the tale. It is erratic, and it is excellent. Try to order your morning coffee as Eddie, and see how the world reacts.
In contrast, Venom's accent is much more muscular and even more whimsical. In an interview with IGV TV, Hardy laughingly describes Venom's voice as a "Little bit of James Brown. Little bit of Method Man. Red Man. Little bit of Richard Burton." We would add that Venom is a little bit ecstatic Sunday morning preacher — and Shakespearean actor on steroids.
2. The Dark Knight Rises
Bane is a bemasked behemoth of a Batman baddie — and a total verbal puzzle. This "The Dark Knight Rises" supervillain is also Tom Hardy's most bizarre accent to date, and possibly the most bizarre accent in the movie — even compared to Christian Bale's breathy Batman.
We could say this accent is absolutely mad based on the arpeggiated chords of Bane's speech patterns. We could blame the accent's bonkers energy on having to fight to be heard from behind his thick rubber face mask. We could liken this accent to a delightfully unhinged duet between Matt Berry's Laszlo in "What We Do In the Shadows" and Catherine O'Hara's Moira Rose in "Schitt's Creek." But apparently, Hardy's Bane accent is (insert Bane voice here) based...in reality.
According to this WIRED interview, Hardy met a Romany bare-knuckle boxer named Bartley Gorman who spoke like Bane. Hardy pitched the voice to director Christopher Nolan, who approved. "And that was that," Hardy grins in the interview. "We played with it, and made it a bit more fluid and now people love it." Excluding Batman, of course.
1. The Bikeriders
It's going to be tough to unseat Bane as the most bizarre Tom Hardy accent, but Hardy's role in the "The Bikeriders" might take Bane's seat and set it on fire. The violent motorcycle drama is set in the '60s, and the accent possibilities are endless.
Hardy's retro Chicago accent doesn't get center stage in the trailer for the upcoming "The Bikeriders." Instead, that honor goes to Jodie Comer, a British actor doing truly wild work as a Chicagoan who must have had a few Old Styles too many on a night out with Linda from "Bob's Burgers." But even though "The Bikeriders" trailer puts Hardy in a corner, his vocal work as Johnny makes his presence known.
Hardy sounds about as Chicagoan as John Leguizamo, but whatever he's doing is working. The phrase "burn it down" becomes "boin it dahn." Hardy has a whole range of New York accents and gangster voices to draw from, but he seems to have left them behind to break new, bizarre ground in "The Bikeriders." We have faith in Hardy here. To borrow a phrase from Johnny, "If he wants to ride a bike, he'll ride a bike."