I have to make my bones with Hollywood to get in. And when I do maybe I’ll metamorphose from Mr. Muscles or whatever it is I am now and become an irascible tosser.

I’m into parlor dramas. I’m into theatre. I’m trained for the stage. I trained to do Chekhov and Shakespeare, I was trained for the stage.

I get hired more then I get seen more. I get seen more then maybe celebrity and fame happens but at the end of the day there’s no difference between my five dollar performance and my fifty million dollar performance. It’s not going to make me a better father.

David Mamet we all know is a great screenplay writer and playwright and a great director. If you like him, you like him. If you hate him, you really hate him. He’s someone who’s into controversy, you know what I mean? That’s David Mamet.

There’s an abundance of exposure when you start working in American films. Inevitably you become a brand and that has to be controlled.

I set myself that decision, otherwise I’m driving an opinion at you, and I think that would be treating you like you’re an idiot. I don’t want to force-feed you my opinion.

I like to be other people, not me. And when you’re on the red carpet, it’s like, ‘Here’s Tom Hardy.’ I don’t want to be me. That’s why I play other people.

I’m just getting settled as a responsible man – but if you split the elephant into little mouthfuls it will be fine.

I wanted my dad to be proud of me, and I fell into acting because there wasn’t anything else I could do, and in it I found a discipline that I wanted to keep coming back to, that I love and I learn about every day.

Being an only child, I didn’t have any other family but my mom and dad really, since the rest of my family lived quite far away from London.