Some quotes from Tom in an article in San Fransisco Chronicle:
About Warrior:
“This is not a fight movie,” says star Tom Hardy, who asserts that the film is really about “family suffering.” He quotes a friend: ” ‘Harm comes from the weak and hurt people’ … people trying to express themselves in this much pain; really needing to, wanting to express they care, but not having been shown care or love, not understanding what care or love are.”
About being cast:
“As I soon as I read it, I thought, ‘I’m never going to get this part,’ ” Hardy says. “You need Chuck Norris for this! The whole thing was out of my depth. This was a guy who was American, a Marine, a cage fighter; the only thing I had any understanding of was the alcoholism, the addiction side of it. The family dysfunction, I get that, I’m at home with that subject as an artist. So that was the in. The trouble was I couldn’t convince anyone I was American or a cage fighter.”
About Tommy:
“He’s got no skin,” Hardy says of Tommy. “He’s running from everything. He can’t sit still. Yeah, he fights for country, they say; I’m not completely sold on that. I think he fights for a father figure. He fights to be held. In the noise, within the ring, in the world of combat, there’s a silence in his head; that’s where he finds his peace of mind. Paradoxically. He’s gone through his own father, through the Marines, through America. He’s somebody who’s close to his mother, brought up by his mother, failed by fathers. It’s a struggle to survive. There’s a desperation.”
About Nick Nolte:
“I don’t know him well enough to take his inventory, but I know he carries a wealth of knowledge about this subject. I’m an alkie myself. I’m a fully paid-up member of that crew. When you have that in the family, there is chaos and pain.
“I think what’s beautiful about what Nick does is he shows the entire range of guilt and shame and amendment and ultimately the authentic journey for one to actually redeem himself. Paddy has a desperate amount of love, and he’s made a terrible, terrible mistake. It’s a very informed performance, incredibly vulnerable - heartbreaking watching him get kicked in the heart over and over again.”
(Source: sfgate.com)
