Tom Hardy knows that his character in Jeff Nichols’ “ The Bikeriders ” may seem to be a badass, charismatic leader of a lawless motorcycle gang — but appearances can be deceiving, he warns. “You look straight away at a biker movie and think, ‘Oh, it’s leather. It’s sexy.
The music’s great. The hair’s great. The obvious choice is to play to all of these.
So the obvious choice for somebody like me is to go to the counterpoint of all those,” he muses. “This guy is a tragic clown.” “Where’s the pathetic element? Where’s the wretch? Where’s the embarrassing moments? Where’s the weaknesses? I need to flesh this guy out.
Why is the voice a little bit creepy? Why is it a little like Bugs Bunny? What can we imbue this stud with that’s so un-studly that I can identify with it? Because I’m not that!” Speaking over Zoom a month ahead of the film’s June 21 release, Hardy seems relaxed and in good spirits, dressed down in a black hoodie and puffing on his vape pen between lengthy answers. It’s a sharp contrast to the heaviness to his role as Johnny, the founder and leader of Chicago’s Vandals motorcycle gang. He immediately rebuffs a compliment about his midwest accent in the film: “I’m not sure that I did nail it,” Hardy says.
But getting the dialect perfectly right was never really his goal. “What’s important to me is that if you’re doing something as an actor, if you’re going to commit, then make the effort to fully commit, e.
