Tom Hardy: 'Venom' allowed me to get paid to talk to myself
NEW YORK, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- Peaky Blinders and The Dark Knight Rises actor Tom Hardy jokes that playing a dual role in the three Venom movies meant he always had the perfect scene partner.
"I agree with myself a lot and that helps," Hardy, 47, recently told the crowd at New York Comic Con.
"When I go to work with myself, I know exactly what I want to do. I very rarely fall out with myself," he added. "I started out talking to myself as a child. I still talk to myself and the nice thing about [this is] now I get paid to talk to myself and I can be bombastic and enigmatic and can cloak my inner machinations in a huge visual-effects monster."
Set for release on DVD and Blu-ray Tuesday, the comic-book adaptation Venom: The Last Dance wraps up the story of Eddie Brock, an investigative journalist who is the host of alien symbiote, giving him super powers that transform him into the vigilante Venom.
"I started the day seven years ago and now it's nighttime. It's time to go to sleep," Hardy said about the franchise that has been all-consuming for him.
"I've absolutely loved playing Eddie and Venom," he added. "It's been one of the best things I've ever done in my life, so I will be sad to see it go."
Written and directed by Kelly Marcel, the third and final Venom movie co-stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Juno Temple.
This time around, Hardy received a story credit for his musings on where Venom should go and what he should do.
"I come up with these fantastic ideas," Hardy laughed. "And, then, what I'll do is, I'll talk at Kelly and I'll keep talking until Kelly says, 'That's enough.' And, then, I'm like, 'She's got it.' And then Kelly goes away and comes back with things I never thought of, but it's all formatted perfectly and I pat myself on the back."
All kidding aside, Hardy said he liked being able to contribute more than just acting to a project he has felt so passionate about.
"It's not really hard to turn up and pull faces," he said.
"Acting, for me, is kind of a memetic art. That is a craft in itself. But storytelling is super important from a nucleus point of view for many different reasons. If you're a storyteller, you're going to want to be able to do that," he added.
"When you have an IP or a character as as wonderful and as deliciously wicked as Venom, and you have such a huge talent like in my partner here, there is an opportunity to play and deepen the challenges you can have as an actor to understand against the canon of the huge amount of lore there is within the comic books... You have this wonderful space to play, but also challenge yourself on the screen, too, so it's immersive. I revel in playing the character because I am deep enough in the fibers of it."
