Tom Hardy: How the dog-loving feminist has captured Londoners' hearts

There's only room for one Tom H in our hearts now. Poor Tom Hiddleston will have to pack up his Taylor Swift T-shirts and move out, for our love for Tom Hardy has squeezed out all pretenders.

This week, the actor, producer, CBeebies story reader and catalyst for legions of women’s most blush-inducing Google searches, has added have-a-go hero to his accolades. Hardy, The Sun claimed, turned Action Man after witnessing a thief crash a moped near his London home — giving chase and vaulting garden fences, before performing a citizen’s arrest and declaring: “I caught the c***.”

But even before this, we knew Hardy was — to adapt a line from Raymond Chandler — a man who could make a Mother Superior smash stained glass. Here’s why.

Have-a-go Hardy

Scotland Yard — the killjoys who clearly don’t realise that this is the tonic we need to survive the general election, balm for our frenzied pain — initially cast doubts on claims Hardy pursued the thief. Later, the Yard admitted a member of the public had assisted in an arrest. We certainly want it to be true. There hasn’t been a better story of celeb heroics (real or imagined) since Ryan Gosling saved journalist Laurie Penny from stepping in front of a taxi.

Yesterday, the bookies cut the odds on Hardy being the next James Bond. William Hill now puts him on 5/2, level-pegging with long-term favourite Idris Elba.

City boy

Hardy grew up in Mortlake, the son of artist mother Anne and the writer Edward “Chips” Hardy, with whom he has written a screenplay. Though his accent doesn’t betray his Sarf Londoner roots — “I’m a bit of a mongrel, I pick up accents and sometimes I don’t know how I am going to sound until I start speaking” he once said — he still lives in south-west London and used to travel by Tube using his “Rolls-Royster card”.

The backstory

Hardy hasn’t had it easy. He’s been expelled twice — from school and the Drama Centre in London — was arrested for joyriding (there was also a gun in the car) when he was 15, and is a reformed drug addict. “I grew up around people - carriers and cardigans and the deer in Richmond Park, but behind those Laura Ashley curtains there are a lot of demons,” Hardy told the Guardian.

He collapsed in Soho 13 years ago after a crack binge but is now clean. As a result, he didn’t learn to drive until he was 30.

While studying drama he worked hard but was overshadowed by another student, Michael Fassbender. “He was the guy everyone wanted to be like,” Hardy says.

The chameleon

Director Christopher Nolan hailed Hardy as a chameleon and his IMDB entry confirms that. He’s played both Kray twins in a biopic, the criminal Charles Bronson and the baddie who tries to put Leo (and viewers) out of their misery in The Revenant. But he also has a signature voice. In The Dark Knight Rises he plays a villain, Bane, whom no one could understand — and that incomprehensible growl can be heard in Taboo.

He has changed his body repeatedly: gaining weight to play both Bronson and Bane. He told Jonathan Ross that he bulked up for the former by eating “chocolate and lots of pizza, and carrying my friend Peanut [an ex-marine who was his personal trainer] up and down stairs”.

Family man

Hardy’s equally pulchritudinous wife is actress Charlotte Riley. The pair met on the set of Wuthering Heights in 2009, where he was Heathcliff to her Cathy, and they have also starred together in Peaky Blinders.

He was previously married to Sarah Ward and has a son, Louis, from a relationship with Rachael Speed, as well as a son with Riley. On YouTube, Hardy can be seen rapping while bouncing his cooing son in a baby sling. No wonder he was the perfect man to read CBeebies’ Bedtime Stories — an IV drip of joy for exhausted parents.

Model behaviour

YouTube is a goldmine for early Hardy trivia. Aged 20, he won a competition on The Big Breakfast to find a male model and you can watch him meandering down the catwalk in Thai fisherman pants and a Blair Waldorf headband. It’s not quite blue steel.

He was later interviewed by Denise van Outen, where he was introduced as “a virile Virgo with dreamy bluey-green eyes”. Van Outen does the 1990s ladette innuendo-and-perve shtick, and admires his tattoos. Hardy also reveals how — returning from a moonlight swim naked while on holiday — he ran through a flyscreen into a crowded room. “Unfortunately Tom today is wearing clothes,” says the stylist.

Comic timing

Luckily given the above, Hardy can laugh at himself. When he was younger, he posted pictures posing in his pants on MySpace as a fishhook for a potential inamorata. He says he’s not embarrassed now — it captured a moment in his life. He also recently acknowledged that his signature looks like a penis.

The naked truth

Hardy has been the catalyst for numerous “Twitter meltdowns”, mostly by being in the buff. He shed his clothes for Bronson and in the BBC’s Taboo he repeatedly appeared naked save for a loincloth. “You’re lucky there was a loincloth,” he said afterwards, a view probably not shared by his fans,“because I didn’t want one.”

Modern man

Forget feminist Ryan Gosling — it’s Hardy who’s on the sisterhood’s side. Despite playing the titular Mad Max in Fury Road, he was really Charlize Theron’s sidekick. Hardy Mad Max memes included “You can use my shoulder as a rifle stand as you’re the better shot of the two of us” (which he does with Theron’s Imperator Furiosa). He takes this attitude off set, calling for better writing for women: “It’s about time you had better female leads in action movies.”

Hardy has spoken about his gratitude to his mother and wife too. “My relationship with my mother and strong women... their support and innate wisdom have helped me carve my way through.”

Way with words

He is a man of relatively few words, but the ones he uses are always well-chosen. “My head is a bit of a dangerous country,” he told Jonathan Ross. “I shouldn’t really go in there without an appropriate adult.” When Ross asked how he kept calm in spite of that, he replied: “Knitting.”

Going to the dogs

Hardy took his dog Woody, a formerly homeless mongrel, to the Kray biopic premiere where Woody chased pigeons on the red carpet. “I don’t have any friends,” he once said. “I have a dog and a son. A dog couldn’t do anything to upset me, you know, and neither could my son.”

He has studied canine mannerisms, and says dogs are very honest with their eyes and that “it’s very hard to fool them”. However, they are also his harshest critics, since he rehearses in front of them. “It’s very soul-destroying. They’re rarely impressed.”