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Great new interview in SHARP magazine:
You’re Afraid of Tom Hardy Because You’re Afraid of Manhood
Tom Hardy is sitting in his wife’s rocking chair, talking about his work.
It’s furniture that she will be using a lot in the near future to feed and console their impending baby. But, since the kid hasn’t come yet, Hardy’s there, rocking beside his dog. Maybe the dog is in his lap. He’s calling from England, so I can’t get a clear visual. The point is: there’s a dog. With Tom Hardy, there is always a dog. It’s pop culture scripture at this point, like Michael Jackson and sequined gloves or Johnny Depp and odd hats. Tom Hardy likes dogs.
And dogs like him. Know why? Because, as man’s best friend, dogs recognize that Tom Hardy is someone to latch on to. Basically, Tom Hardy is the Ideal Man. And so, the logic is, the better the man, the better the friend. Dogs sense this kind of thing instinctively. And, while we might not be as good at it as they are, nor as open about it, other men sense this kind of thing, too. There’s something about Hardy that pulls us in, magnetic, but in a decisively un-showy way. Frankly, it’s hard to put your finger on how we reach this conclusion, but some animal part of our brains seems to have decided that Hardy is everything men want to be. Yeah, that line gets thrown around a lot with male actors, but that’s more about an actor’s persona, or the characters they play. As elusive as Hardy can be, there is just something übermensch-y about him.
Yes, it’s a hyperbolic statement, which could easily come off as fawning — something that, ironically, Tom Hardy would never be — and thus, requires some study to back it up. That’s what we’ll be doing here.
It should be said: Hardy would almost certainly disagree with this assessment. While he’s rocking, he’s telling me about the IKEA furniture he had to build recently. And how it was impossible. “It’s like a massive bowl of spaghetti. It’s great at first, but then it keeps going and going, and you’re sure it was light out when you started eating it,” he says. “You start out all positive. But then my wife has to come in and finish it.” The furniture, he means, not the metaphorical pasta.
Which reminds him: “Monkey?” he calls to his wife, “Am I good at anything manly?”
“You’re a good protector,” she says. “I always feel safe with you.”
“There you go,” he says, mock-triumphantly, “I’m a protector.”

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