Tom Hardy Once Choked out ‘the Revenant’ Director to Relieve Stress From Shooting the Film
The Revenant was a film that pushed the actors involved to their limit. Leonardo DiCaprio recalled getting the flu multiple times due to the below-freezing temperatures on set. At one point, DiCaprio even resorted to sleeping in a dead animal’s body. But Tom Hardy also had a difficult time filming the movie. So much so that he even got into a physical altercation with the director and had to choke him out to relieve some tension.
Tom Hardy admits the rumors of him being difficult are true
Hardy has had a rumor following him that he’s difficult to work with. It’s something that his Mad Max Fury Road co-star, Charlize Theron, can attest to. While filming the movie, Theron admits to arguing with her co-star constantly. However, the Atomic Blonde lead also clarifies that it was the pressures of the movie that created tension between them.
“It was the isolation, and the fact that we were stuck in a rig for the entire shoot,” Theron said. “We shot a war movie on a moving truck—there’s very little green screen. It was like a family road trip that just never went anywhere. We never got anywhere. We just drove.”
Regardless, Hardy did admit that his reputation for being difficult was true.
“I have a reputation for being difficult. And I am. I am, actually,” Hardy told Esquire (via E! News.) “But I’m not unreasonable. It used to be that if somebody hurt me I’d lash out a bit, in order to get them to stop. It ultimately comes from fear.”
Hardy later learned, however, that he couldn’t lash out as much if he wanted to maintain a career.
“If I cause enough of a mess, then people will never ask me again to do something I don’t want to do,” Hardy added. “But that sort of backfires after a while so you don’t want to do that. You grow up.”
Tom Hardy choked out ‘the Revenant’ director to relieve stress from filming the movie
Tensions were high between Hardy and Alejandro Inarritu on the set of The Revenant. According to EW, Hardy commented how Inarritu’s methods of filmmaking could make him lose it.
“He’s unlike any director I’ve ever worked with,” Hardy said. “He sees things how he sees them, so to give him back what he wants is quite an interesting experience. It could drive you f***** nuts.”
Because of Inarritu’s filmmaking, Hardy found himself at odds with the director. So to relieve stress, The Dark Knight Rises star offered a rather unconventional method as a solution.
“When things get a bit too serious, I go, ‘Why don’t we have a cuddle in front of all these people here?’ ” Hardy recalled. “It ends with both of us falling down in the snow. I think that’s a good thing. If I’m the naughty boy for doing that, then I’d rather be the naughty boy and release that tension.”
The cast and crew were so amused by Hardy’s scuffle with the director that someone took a picture of it. Hardy even made a shirt out of the sign, which shows Hardy physically choking his director.
But despite Hardy’s humorous account of the altercation, there’s another version of that story that paints the fight in bleaker light.
An anonymous Reddit poster offered a darker take of Tom Hardy’s fight with Alejandro Inarritu
The fight between Tom Hardy and his director might not have been as fun as Hardy claimed it was. Independent reported that a Redditor, who claimed to work on the set of the Revenant, shared a darker interpretation of events.
“That’s not what happened,” the Redditor wrote about Hardy’s claims. “Hardy got pissed off in an argument with Innaritu and choked him out. It was a serious fight, and when they made up afterward they were good enough to goof about it and took that picture. My boss was on the crew, I took that picture. (Must have made the internet rounds.)”
Whatever the case, Inarritu had nothing but kind words for the Inception actor, showing that there are no hard feelings.
“On the surface, he can look inaccessible or difficult,” Inarritu admitted. “But he is just a beautiful human being. He’s incredibly sensitive and lovable.”
