charlidos

Tom in Stuart A Life Backwards.

This photo is progressively getting more revealed - soon we’ll know what shoes he’s wearing. Exciting! :)

(Source: twitter.com)

A photo of Tom Hardy for Stuart a Life Backwards. ♥ ♥ 

(Source: twitter.com)

Stuart a Life Backwards is on Swedish TV tonight at 23.15, Svt2! Yay! A good chance to watch one of my absolute favourite Tom Hardy characters, with Swedish subtitles (since he isn’t that easy to understand…). And then there’s Benny too! Amazing on-screen chemistry between the two. Such a great little film. :D 

Tom Hardy & Benedict Cumberbatch in Stuart: A Life Backwards. ♥ ♥ 

My scan of this photo!

Tom Hardy in Stuart: A Life Backwards in a beautiful HQ close-up.

I can’t ever get over how he just IS Stuart, it’s evident even in still photos. This isn’t Tom, this is Stuart. ♥ ♥

Tom Hardy is unbelievable in Stuart: A Life Backwards, its such a beautiful film. He plays a homeless schizophrenic and is incredible – he physically becomes the different characters in his psychosis. I really admire actors who can take themselves to that place, and aren’t afraid. 

- Jessica Brown Findlay (of Downton Abbey fame) speaks the truth on the brilliance that is Tom Hardy as Stuart. :)

(Source: hungertv.com)

Tom seems to have absorbed the character completely,” says [Alexander Masters]. “On and off set, he lived the character. I’m astonished at how well he managed to portray Stuart’s humour. He was an extremely funny man with so many insights. It took me a long time to get the tone of the TV production right, to get the right balance between the pathos and the humour. But Tom has managed to capture the complexity beautifully. That’s an incredibly difficult thing to do, I think.”

Hardy’s affinity with Stuart was no less personal. “I had a lot in common with Stuart, with the exception of a couple of very serious experiences – specifically the child abuse he suffered, and the muscular dystrophy. Everything else I have full comprehension of,” he says. “I could relate to the drugs and his attitude at points, too – d’you know what I mean? There were a lot of similarities between us. I thought ‘Oh, oh, oh [he bounces up and down on the sofa in excitement, his trainers pitter-pattering on the carpet], I can bring something to this!’ It came from my own baggage.”

- about Stuart a Life Backwards from The Times.

If any of you who are new to Tom Hardy-world haven’t seen Stuart a Life Backwards… Don’t wait another minute! Definitely one of his - and anyone else’s for that matter - best performances. 

“Stuart was the best role I’ve ever had – probably ever will have,” he says, solemnly. “I could stop now, technically. I’m not going to, because I love the craft, I love playing, I love acting. But that is as good as it gets, for me. So I can’t say what will happen next. Even though I know there’s no such thing as perfection, I’m still looking for it. It drives me. But I have a fear of success and a fear of failure. Self-sabotage is in my make-up. It can be debilitating. I can’t stand being in my head, that’s why I have to get out of it. That’s where the drugs and drink came in. I don’t do any of that any more, though. That’s why I have to act.” He pauses, frowning. “D’you know what I mean?”

“I love Stuart,” Hardy says. “I love him. I feel for him, his pain, d’you know what I mean? There’s more pain in him than there is in me,” reflects Hardy, “and there’s a gratitude there in some ways, because I think, ‘Well at least I’m not in as much pain as this poor guy.’ I don’t want to make it sound sentimental, though. Alexander has written something that sings. I fell in love with the piece. I could hear the music of it.”

An old review (from the New Statesman, Oct, 2007) of Stuart a Life Backwards which I think captures some of what is so great about this extraordinary film:

Benedict Cumberbatch as the posh, slightly nerdy Masters and Tom Hardy as the slurring, staggering (he had muscular dystrophy, on top of everything else) Stuart. Cumberbatch is a scene stealer of such prowess that he can nick an entire movie from its star with a handful of lines (if you don’t believe me, see Starter for Ten, whose lead, supposedly, is James McAvoy). Here, however, his performance was deliberately tamped down. He brought Masters alive with the smallest of tics - slow-blinking myopic eyes , the odd wry look - and managed to avoid making him seem like a patronising prig, a serious danger, given how little time he had to establish his character.

It was Hardy, though, who broke your heart. I can’t remember the last time I saw a performance as convincing as this. Usually, when actors take on “extreme” roles - think Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot- you can see the hard labour that has gone into the acting, and it’s exhausting; part of you just wants to shout: “Oh, speak properly, for God’s sake!” Not here. Hardy was Stuart, and every time he was on screen - which was most of the time - 1 was mesmerised. The clumpy feet, the low-slung trousers, the way his expression changed in a moment, like the sun going behind the clouds: it was all there, almost as if the real Stuart had come back to remind us all what middle-class “scum ponces” we are, with our futile liberal guilt and our lazy assumptions and our need to have a good cry in front of the television on a Sunday night.