Tom Hardy Once Told Michael Fassbender to Quit His Method Acting

Many consider Michael Fassbender to be one of the top talents in the industry, including his fellow actor Tom Hardy. But although Hardy often admired Fassbender, there was a point where he felt Fassbender’s method acting might have been a bit too much.

Tom Hardy and Michael Fassbender went to the same drama school

Hardy and Fassbender met perhaps years before most film fans knew who they were. Hardy described the film school they went to when he started acting as challenging, but only because it brought out the best in their students.

“Have you seen that movie Whiplash? I went to a school like that. You know, a drama school very similar to that. And the guy that trained me, they based Hannibal Lecter on him. His pursuit was just to f***ing destroy us. He wanted us to achieve excellence, and I think all of us failed to impress him, to be fair,” Hardy once told Details (via Daily Actor).

Hardy, however, was up to the challenge. And it was a philosophy that’s helped him his entire career.

“But that’s where I came from, and it was always laced with danger, that place. Which was always the attitude: This isn’t about money or fame, this is just about doing what it says on the tin,” Hardy said.

Tom Hardy once told Michael Fassbender to quit his method acting

Fassbender was already someone that Hardy had great admiration for. Even among other actors, Hardy felt that Fassbender was special.

“Mikey Fassbender, he was in the third year, and he was, like, the s***,” Hardy said.

But Fassbender was once so dedicated to the craft that he took his method acting outside of theater. Which created a minor inconvenience for Hardy when it was time for him to eat.

“And [Michael Fassbender] was in this wheelchair, ’cause his character is in a wheelchair. We had, like, half an hour for lunch, a half an hour to feed the whole school,” Hardy explained. “We had this little canteen, Barbara’s canteen, and Mikey would be holding up the whole queue ’cause he wouldn’t get out of his f***ing wheelchair. That’s the kind of school I went to. ‘Mikey, man, just stand the f*** up and order your lunch so we can go back to school, so we don’t get thrown out at the end of the week.’ And he’d be like, ‘F*** you!’”

Michael Fassbender is one of Tom Hardy’s man-crushes

Even after both of their successes, Hardy still aspired to work alongside Fassbender one day. But Fassbender wasn’t the only actor he hoped to share the stage or screen with. If Hardy had it his way, he’d do a film that included all of the performers he looked up to.

“It’s the year of hero worship! I look up to [Fassbender], I look up to Ryan Gosling. Those two, totally man-crushing at the moment. It would be really cool if the three of us could do something together, because I’d be well up for that,” Hardy once said in an interview with Daily Beast. “And if Gary Oldman can get in on that as well, I’d want some of that, too.”

So far, Gosling and Hardy haven’t worked together. He hasn’t worked alongside Fassbender yet either, but Hardy ironically ended up replacing him in the film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.