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 It looks as if George Smiley - in the guise of Gary Oldman - is set to return to the big screen.

A follow-up was talked about the best part of a year ago, with the novel Smiley’s People the logical source. And now, Collider has now spoken to producer Eric Fellner, who has revealed that “we are working on another one”. He continued, saying “Tim Bevan is putting it together as we speak with Peter Straughan and Tomas Alfredson, so yes, it’s in development”.

Yay! This is wonderful news! Even though Tom won’t be in this one (Ricki Tarr doesn’t appear in this book, does he? They should get him in there, though. I do love Ricki - one of my favourite Tom-characters. And I do love Tom a bit so I think he should be everywhere. Even if he says he can’t…), TTSS is one of my favourite films of the past few years, so a sequel is exactly what I need. 

(Source: denofgeek.com)

An interview with Tom Hardy from the Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter. This time translated by me! I love seeing him get some press in Sweden. Best quote: “My biggest talent is that I’m me.” Trademark Hardy. :D

After Inception, The Dark Knight Rises and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the Brit Tom Hardy is one of Hollywood’s hottest items. In John Hillcoat’s Lawless he plays a bootlegging … matriarch.

At drama school in London, Tom Hardy and his class mates used to compete about who could imitate Gary Oldman the best. Hardy claims to not be the sort who’s easily impressed and who’s usually star struck. But when he stood face to face with his idol during the filming of Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he was seriously tongue-tied. The scene where the traumatised MI6-puppy Ricki Tarr cries on George Smiley’s sofa had to be reshot several times.

“I’ve stolen everything from Gary Oldman,” Tom Hardy admits.

Furthermore, it was Tom Hardy who made Gary Oldman accept a supporting role as a gangster boss in John Hillcoat’s Lawless. Oldman is well and good, but this time it’s his disciple who steals the show. Tom Hardy is the main draw in an otherwise rather mediocre film based on Matt Bondurant’s novel about his relatives, The Wettest County in the World (2008), a violent tale of a tough family of bootleggers during Prohibition in the American Midwest. Hardy plays the middle brother Forrest Bondurant among three lawless redneck brothers who are trying to survive the depression of the 30’s and a sadistic sheriff (Guy Pearce) in Virginia.

“You could call this a wangster-film, a mix of western and gangster. Lawless is like The Waltons on acid. I myself was brought up watching Vietnam war films like Apocalypse Now and The Platoon, they were my westerns,” Tom Hardy smiled when I met him in Cannes this spring. Hollywoods latest hot item met part of the world press in torn jeans and and a green t-shirt with the text Support Our Troops which can’t hide all the tattoos on his upper arms. And a wild beard for his role as the road warrior Max Rockatansky who’s making a come back in George Miller’s Mad Max 4: Fury Road (2013). Hardy is one of those actors who always manages to transform himself completely for each new character. As the Batman-villain Bane he even manages to carve out a character, in spite of wearing a huge toaster glued to his face. The role of Forrest was also a first class transformation.

“Sure, I’d love to be Clint Eastwood, but I’ll never be like him. I’m from East Sheen, London, and this is the US so right there’s an apparent physical transformation,” Tom Hardy explains and begins a long tirade about how he “hotwired” his character, getting past the director’s instruction.

“They wanted Forrest to be a hard macho guy, but I wanted him to be a woman. Forrest is a matriarch - not a patriarch. Sure, I’ll put on Clint’s cowboy hat and put a cigar in my mouth and the muscles were already there for The Dark Knight Rises. But Forrest is the mother of his brothers, he acts like a tough guy, but he isn’t tough - he’s realised he has to take care of his family and be loving if you want to survive,” Hardy explains.

As opposed to Forrest, Tom Hardy doesn’t want to have anything to do with alcohol or drugs. Anymore. He’s been free from alcohol and drugs for ten years. The only experimentation he does these days is on the job.

“My biggest talent is that I’m me. That I’m there will of course mean that I’ll put something of myself into my character. Everytime I create a new character I’m always looking for the right hook. And everytime I feel the same weird dread before the first day of filming. I’m fidgeting like a worm on a fish hook. I’m freaking out. I’m often overly ambitious, but it mostly ends up with me not working seriously until the cameras are rolling,” says Tom Hardy who’s in a joking frame of mind. When his co-actor Guy Pearce, sitting next to him, says that he chooses work on the basis of “the right combination of script, character and director”, Hardy adds:

“And the number of zeros on the paycheck!”

Asking if playing Bane in The Dark Knight Rises has changed his life, Hardy answers:

“Sure! And most of all it will change YOUR life!”

Hardy becomes significantly more serious when he’s asked to comment on working with Tomas Alfredson in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

“There’s no one I’m more enthusiastic about than Tomas Alfredson, he’s one of the most delightful people and artists I’ve ever met. It was a pleasure working with him, or rather working for. I’m hoping to work WITH him one day when I’ve grown up,” Hardy says with a smile. In contrast to many of his Hollywood-colleagues he seems aware of living in a dream-world. Hardy is happy to talk about his charities, for example being an ambassador for Prins Charles’ trust fond for disadvantaged youth and as an activitist in collecting money for disabled soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s a cruel world out there, it’s important to remember that Hollywood is just a sheltered world. The worst that can happen is that someone criticises your acting, but no one will shoot your brains out for real.”

Lovefilm did a live commentary on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy the other day, with Tomas Alfredson and Peter Straughn. Tomas called Tom Hardy ‘lovely’ and ‘enthusiastic’ and Peter shared this anecdote from the scene in the photo above (made even more funny by Gary Oldman’s recent comment from the TDKR set about Tom talking):

Gary told me that in this scene - this is a studio set in Smiley’s house, so they had to, at one point, take a wall out, to do the reverse shot. And Tom was apparently just chatting away to him and Gary decided to stay in character. So he just sat in complete silence for about whatever time it took - an hour - while they were setting up the shot. While Tom just kept on chatting. And it’s almost the same energy as the scene where Smiley just watches and makes him talk. 

The Swedish journalist who met Tom Hardy in Cannes - and who also fulfilled her promise to him to pass on his greetings to Tomas Alfredson, and his wish to work with Tomas again.

Tomas Alfredson’s next project seems to be a new version of Astrid Lindgren’s book The Brothers Lionheart. Which sounds brilliant! I love the old film, it’s part of my childhood, but I bet Tomas Alfredson can add something new and wonderful to it. Probably no part for Tom in there, though… Unless he’ll learn to speak Swedish! He said he’s prepared to learn new languages, so why not? *g*

(Source: twitter.com)

From a Swedish paper (!), some words from Tom Hardy on Tomas Alfredson and more (translation by me):

A greeting from hard man Hardy to the director Tomas Alfredson:

“Promise you’ll go back to Sweden and ask Tomas Alfredson to call me. I want to work with him again. I want to be a part of Tomas’ family”, Tom Hardy says and laughs.

If you think that movie stars always look like they do on the red carpet, with all the flashes going off, it’s a (nice) exception to meet Hollywood’s new favourite Brit. Tom Hardy, 34, wears tattered jeans, tattoos spilling out from his green t-shirt and then that enormous beard, but it is there for a reason.

“It’s for a part. And there’s a woman I’m playing against”, he says and points to a photo of Charlize Theron on the wall.

Tom Hardy is filming Mad Max in George Miller’s new version, but is in Cannes with the Palme d’Or nominate Lawless, a brutal story of three bootlegging brothers in the US during the depression. Hardy plays the apparently emotionless middle brother Forrest. 

“I had a cigar and a hat and muscles, but that was because I was preparing for Batman at the same time.

“The tough guy isn’t tough at all, it’s a man covering for the loss of his mother. Nobody ever cared about Forrest”, Tom Hardy says. 

His career started with Band of Brothers and Black Hawk Down, but lately he’s become a favourite for the bad guy, in for example Inception and Warrior. During this interview in Cannes, he’s far from a brute, laughing, jumping into the photo, being silly. When his Lawless colleague Guy Pearce says he chooses parts because of characters, scripts and director, Hardy shouts. “Money! There has to be a lot of zeroes.”

I ask what Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy meant to him and Tom Hardy answers immediately. 

“I love to talk about Tomas Alfredson! He’s amazing, does his own thing. He’s one of the loveliest men I’ve met, he’s an artist. He’s someone I’ll try to work with again”, Hardy says then corrects himself. “FOR, I want to work FOR him! I hope to work WITH him too, when I grow up.”

(Source: expressen.se)

This picture perfectly illustrates what is discussed here (terrific article!), namely the amazing set design of Tinker Tailor. One thing that often bothers me in period pieces, is that mostly, everything shown is from the period in question, and nothing is older, when most people own a lot of older things as well. I love that Tomas Alfredson and his team thought of this.

Gary Oldman, who plays George Smiley, mentioned how real George’s house felt, which helped him enormously.

TA: That’s a set, completely onstage. We found the exterior first and that sort of established for us where he lived. It was so well made and I was so impressed how much attention and love was put into that set.

You feel it. It looks like a place where someone lives, not visits, and has lived there for a long time.

TA: Yes. That is something you really have to relate to when you do period pieces. This is set in 1973, and in ’73 a gentleman his age would have one or two pieces in his home that are contemporary. Everything else is much older. When they established their home…it might have been late 50s, early 60s when George and Ann built their home. So, especially in those days when people were much poorer, they would keep things longer.

 From a Swedish interview with director Tomas Alfredson - about Gary Oldman and George Smiley’s glasses. (Originally in Swedish - translated by me.)

The choice of glasses is something you seem to have put a lot of consideration into?

The first thing you have to consider when you’re choosing glasses for a main character in a film is that they will be as visible as the world’s biggest film creation. The glasses will be in view all the time. You have to be very picky with what you put in the middle of a lead actor’s face. 

It’s also a visual theme with George Smiley as a voyeur. What he sees can be reflected in his glasses. In films you usually add something called anti-reflex treatment on glasses. The result is that the lenses can be percieved as a bit dead. We made the unusual decision to do the other way around. There are so many reflexes in Smiley’s glasses in the film that if you look carefully you can in certain scenes see a photographer or me as director glimpse by, but that’s the way it is. 

The glasses and the change of glasses at the optician’s, also has an important narrative function. We had enormous trouble helping the audience to navigate through this complex story. It moves back and forth in time. But it’s so boring with signs like ‘Prag, 1967’. To have Smiley wearing different glasses in the past and the present instead, makes it easier to navigate.

His old glasses are signified by his desire to blend in, to look like any old uncle. There we chose glasses from England’s equivalent of the county council. Then when he’s fired from MI6 in the beginning of the film, he’s thrown out into an involuntary retirement. It’s a point where he can change shape and because of that can try out new glasses at the optician’s.

But Gary Oldman took forever choosing his glasses. He changed and changed until it was about to drive you mad. Press pictures were taken, but only a few days before filming began, he changed again. The glasses he finally chose are not too different from the ones Alec Guinness is wearing in the tv version. I didn’t dare point it out, for fear he’d go crazy again, but I will ask him next time I see him if it’s meant as an homage. 

David Dencik, Gary Oldman and Tomas Alfredson at the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy premiere in NYC last night.

I’ve gotten so used to seeing Gary with a mustache and glasses that I hardly recognised him here.

Mark Strong was there as well. I do wonder who in the cast will turn up at the LA premiere next week.

(Source: facebook.com)

From an article about how the amazing cast of TTSS was put together:

Alfredson has said, “When Gary was suggested for the role, the reaction was ‘Perfect!’ Just look at this actor’s career and how many characters he’s played. Gary has all the star quality, yet he is also a chameleon; he doesn’t have this voice that you would recognize through a wall.”

According to Jay, she, Alfredson, and Slovo discussed Oldman’s work, as an actor and as a film director—Oldman, after all, helmed (and wrote) “Nil by Mouth,” which starred Burke and which probably enabled Oldman and Burke to spark the decades-long mutual admiration felt by Smiley and Sachs. Firth, says Jay, seemed the “immediate counterpoint” to Oldman’s Smiley. As for the remaining roles, says Jay, “With each and every actor, Tomas and I worked closely together to build the Circus personnel. No one read for their part. Tomas simply viewed their previous work, and the ‘interview’ was simply a cup of tea with Tomas.

Tom must have been very pleased to just have a cup of tea with Tomas Alfredson (and possibly Gary O - didn’t he say he met them both at first?) instead of auditioning. Tom seems to have a rather particular relationship to auditions (see Nemesis & Warrior…).

(Source: backstage.com)