charlidos

Brett C Leonard (seen here with Tom), who has written The Long Red Road, now being made into a film, also wrote another script, together with Tom Hardy. Here’s how Tom described it (would have been brilliant!):

“I was writing a movie some time ago, called The Other, which was something totally different than I’ve done before. I was going to become a woman. I was prepared to cut off my penis (laughs). Actually I was going to have a double with an incredible body and my head would be placed on it. But the project did not happen.” 

fabuloustomhardy:

Tom Hardy & Michael Shannon drive ‘Long Red Road’ —

Tom Hardy and Michael Shannon are attached to topline “The Long Red Road” in the first feature from newly-minted Whipsmart.

Hardy is to reprise his role as Sam in the bigscreen adaptation of Brett C. Leonard’s play of the same name, in which he attempts to drink away his demons on an Indian reservation in South Dakota. When a visitor from his past arrives, Sam has to take a hard look at the man he’s become and the life he left behind.

Shannon is on board to play the older brother of Hardy’s character.

“The Long Red Road” premiered in 2010 at the Goodman Theater in Chicago with Philip Seymour Hoffman directing. It’s uncertain if Hoffman will be attached to direct the feature version. (x)

Brilliant! I hope, if it happens, that PSH does direct. :)

A photo of Tom Hardy on stage for The Long Red Road in 2010 - one I hadn’t seen before. :)

An interview with Tom Hardy & Philip Seymour Hoffman about the play The Long Red Road from the Chicago Sun Times, Feb 19 2010 (no link available):

Enter the Internet’s information highway — and follow the signs to American Indian sites — and you will discover the profoundly spiritual meaning of the term “red road.” One guidepost reads this way: “To walk the Red Road is to know sacrifice, suffering. It is to understand humility. It is the ability to stand naked before the Creator in all things for your wrong doings, for your lack of strength, for your discompassionate way, for your arrogance — because to walk the Red Road, you always know you can do better. And you know, when you do good things, it is through the Creator, and you are grateful.”

All this (or maybe it’s just the frigid Chicago weather) might help explain the mix of mild obfuscation, borderline depression and self-deprecating humor that seems to wrap itself around all three of the men most closely involved in the Goodman Theatre’s world-premiere production of “The Long Red Road.”

The trio includes playwright Brett C. Leonard (whose starkly poetic “Guinea Pig Solo,” a play about an Iraq war veteran, was produced here in 2005 by Collaboraction), director Philip Seymour Hoffman (the Academy Award-winning actor, whose uncanny portrayal of Truman Capote is just one of his many masterful turns) and British actor Tom Hardy (the busy young star of theater, films and television who played Heathcliff in the Masterpiece Classic version of “Wuthering Heights” seen on PBS, and whose important early roles were in the TV miniseries “Band of Brothers” and the film “Black Hawk Down”).

At lunch recently, the 32-year-old Hardy — a slim, dark, bad-boy handsome man with uneven teeth and full lips — sat hunched over his Blackberry, tightly zipped into his North Face jacket, with a plaid wool scarf wrapped securely around his neck and stubbly chin. Sharing the table was Hoffman, 42, looking as disheveled and unwashed as a college student, with scraggly hair and beard, grungy jeans and layers of T-shirts.

Both men ordered the veal meatloaf, and as they cleaned their plates they spoke nervously about the dark drama they were probing. “The play is the story of two brothers and two families,” Hoffman said. “Sam [Hardy’s character] lives in a studio apartment on a South Dakota Indian reservation, where he and his girlfriend work as teachers and he drinks heavily. His wife lives back in Kansas with their 13-year-old daughter and with Sam’s older brother. Nine years earlier, Sam was responsible for a terrible accident that left his wife severely maimed and one of their twin daughters dead.”

As for how Leonard, a California-bred, New York-based playwright, came to write an American character for a young English actor (whose appearance on a U.S. stage required considerable wrangling with Equity), the answer is simple. “Brett [Leonard] is one of my best friends, and we have a shared love of work, and life, and being men,” Hardy said.

As for bringing the show to the Goodman, Hoffman noted that his ties to Robert Falls and the theater date back to 1994 when he played a role here (opposite Del Close, as his father) in the Peter Sellars version of “The Merchant of Venice.” “‘Red Road’ is about a man who doesn’t have the ideal skill set for life — for being a father, husband, boyfriend,” Hardy said. “It’s about wanting to fulfill your potential and failing to do so. It’s about alcohol, and the different roles played by those who find themselves in the life of the carrier of that disease. It’s about people who end up together in rather dysfunctional units, people who have gone to a community where they hope they’ll not feel so alone. “It is about the shame, fear and embarrassment that comes with alcoholism, and about trying to ‘keep it in the family’ until it spills over in often traumatic ways. And it’s about the saver, the enabler, the fixer, the co-dependent. Everybody has a part to play.”

Hardy has been with the play throughout its long development process, flying on his own dime to the United States from London a couple of times for workshops, including a Summer Intensive in Vermont done under the auspices of LAByrinth, the New York-based theater ensemble Hoffman joined in 1995. And clearly he feels emotionally connected to Leonard’s play, having had his own alcohol and drug problems to conquer early on. Once divorced and the father of a 21-month-old son with an ex-girlfriend, Hardy also has had his share of relationship issues.

For Hoffman, who trained at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, the career mix of acting and directing is just a natural part of the LAByrinth formula. During his many years as co-artistic director of that company, he championed the plays of Stephen Adly Guirgis, directing “In Arabia, We’d All Be Kings” and “Jesus Hopped the A Train.” “Mostly I’m a member of that gypsy tribe known as actors — the people whose job it is to mirror life,” Hoffman said.

As for Hardy, acting is simply “the first thing that was solid in my life, and the only thing I could do. I’ve always been a good liar, and quite obsessive, and strived to be the best. Acting was the way I found I could get paid for it. Anything where I could play and have adults smiling at the same time was where I wanted to be, and still do.”

Hardy, who studied at the Drama Centre London and Richmond Drama School, finds few differences between stage and film work. “For me, there are only two kinds of acting — convincing and not convincing,” said the actor, who is working on an American accent for the play. “You’re trying to create truth in illusion. What makes the stage harder is trying to be intimate while reaching a thousand people without a microphone.”

As for being directed by a stellar actor like Hoffman, Hardy confesses: “On one hand, nothing could be more satisfying. But it also is difficult to deal with a guy who could do it so well himself.” Hoffman brushes that off, observing that “all actors feel someone else can do it better, but they can’t. I feel like that all the time.”

So, what do actors want? “Money and time off,” quipped Hardy, who nevertheless confessed he spends some nights rehearsing alone on the Goodman stage, and others playing with his Xbox. “We want to be told we have the job, and then we want it to be over and be told we were really good.” Hoffman agreed wholeheartedly but said his job as a director was “to create an ensemble while dealing honestly with each actor individually, according to his or her own pace and way of working.”

A photo of Tom from the play the Long Red Road.

Just one I hadn’t seen before. :)

Part 3 of the interview with Tom Hardy from Lodown magazine. This is about drugs, Star Trek, Stuart and stage work.

(Part 1 Part 2 Part 4) Part 3:

The first time we met was for Star Trek Nemesis, you were going through personal difficulties at the time…
TH: Massively, I was high as a kite! [Breaks out laughing.] I wasn’t even on the fucking planet! That’s not put a finer point on it – I was on it, New Jack City style. Let’s make no bones about it, I was on rocket fuel. Man I was fucked. And I thought that film was going to make me a superstar. How wrong was I?

But at the same time…
TH: Still in it to win it, mate.

You managed to carry on doing theatre and getting plaudits at the same time. It wasn’t all about chasing highs; you were grounded in some respects in your work.
TH: Somebody up there must like me and I must be doing something right.

For example, doing the play recently with Philip Seymour Hoffman (who directed Hardy in The Long Red Road by Brett C Leonard) he won’t just work with anybody.
TH: No, you’re right and I’m very grateful for that. I spent 10 weeks with him in Chicago hanging on his every word and working with to a place where he’s my friend as well. I do love what I do. I’m lucky enough to have a skill set and certain amount of talent, to be able to do and move with certain people to do certain work, and that’s a sort of secured level of self-esteem, desire, ambition and need to fulfill certain criteria.

I must admit at the time of Nemesis it was apparent you had the goods to bring to the table, but what was your state of mind to your work? Did you have an inner confidence? Did you compare yourself to other British actors to gain confidence?
TH: That’s interesting. That’s low self-esteem manifesting itself as looking at others and saying I can do better than this cant here, which manifests itself as false pride and ambition in the wrong place. I was off-centre. When I pointed the finger of blame at people, there were three pointing back. Naturally, growing older and wiser with experience, it’s no longer “I want to be the best”, which was quite immature and an arrogant defect, but now I just want to be the best that I can be. I want to be part of a team. I’ve had a limited amount of experience where I’ve had a certain amount of success and interest from people whom I deem to be very fucking good at what they do. They’ve validated my prescence by saying come in, Tom, we want to work with you.

You haven’t been shy in playing characters that in many ways reflect the way you were – Sammy in the Philip Seymour Hoffman play and the character of Stuart.
TH: We know Stuart and Sammy. Stuart is not far from where I’ve come from. I’m not Stuart, but I identify hugely. The message is in the fact that I find these people’s struggles, epic struggles, on a molecular basis and a very individual basis  - they may not be the President of the United States of America – this is a guy struggling in Cambridge to fucking live. That is intrinsically important and vital for me to be a part of, the message of care, love and understanding, and to give a voice to that make up, that individual, because I get it. Other actors have desires to be other characters, but I search out these because I find them more fascinating because I identify with them. It’s cathartic as well. It’s also partly coming to the project with some kind of experience of sorts and then manifesting it into the acting. I’m an artist as well. It might sound wank, but I do see myself as an artist. I don’t say it a lot, but at the end of the day, I am.

Well, it’s proper “acting”, so to speak.
TH: Absolutely. The meat and potatoes of good film are with those individuals and teams like say the Coen brothers, who manifest great pieces of work and ultimately art, who observe and reflect society on a level which is incredibly apt and specific. [Laughing.]

Brett Leonard & Tom Hardy are very close. :)

I met [playwright] Brett C. Leonard when the Royal Academy of Arts produced a reading of his play Roger and Vanessa. I really wanted to do that play, so I spoke with Brett and we really connected. We produced the play in a small fringe theater in London, and Brett and I spent a lot of time together and forged a really strong bond.

Brett and I are both deeply insecure. Brett analyzes insecurity and fear in his work, giving voice to characters who are struggling through life. We are attuned to each other, and when he writes something, I understand it on a very essential level. Performing his work enhances my connection to it, and working with Brett always makes me feel good and fills me up as an artist. That’s what I think theater should be. I think acting should be useful and educational. Theater should grow me as a person and help other people.

Brett and I have similar experiences with destructive and volatile relationships. We have mistakes and regrets. We have amendments to make, and we have disappointments and fears and insecurities.

From here. Photos from THP.

Have we ever gotten an explanation for the black eyes here? It was long after filming Warrior - around Feb-March 2010. So, who punched him in the eyes? Paul Bettany? *g*

Or is it Mad Max related, maybe?