Tom Hardy quotes:

If you're lucky like me, your relationship with your brother has resolved itself on the peaceful side of the fence and has stayed there. But if you're someone who's got a family that's all fractured and finding it hard to relate, that's a very sad place to be.

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.

It's about the characters, it's about the film, it's about the process of making stunning visuals and a huge, epic movie. It doesn't matter if my head was covered in a black plastic bag and I was bouncing around in a space hopper: That's the villain of Chris Nolan's 'Batman!'

The characters I've played have been mostly violent, and I'm so far from being violent or aggressive. I spend a lot of time watching 'Fireman Sam' with my three-year-old son Louis.

I'm very sensitive. Because my mum was my primary emotional caregiver growing up, I found myself being pinned into dresses, darting her dresses, choosing her high heels for the evening or what to wear. I'm very much a mommy's boy.

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.

Online dating is cool but I think Myspace and Facebook is a little bit off key.

I think I had only been working nine months when I got 'Star Trek,' and it was huge. It was very overwhelming. So that opened my eyes a bit at an early age, kind of how not be frightened when walking into a responsibility of something like that.

I play Xbox. I have a little boy to look after. I have dogs. You know, I have things to do. I would love to be able to sit down and watch something like a movie. I watch my own movies because I have to.

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.

Then there's your diet. You cut out sugars, fat, soy sauces... anything that's nice. Tea and coffee is replaced by boiling water with lemon. It's amazing how quickly you get into it. There's also herbal tea and a lot of water, obviously... about two litres a day.

Style, I think, is panache. Who are you? What did you do today? And what are you worth to me? What do you have to offer the world? How did you spend your time today on this planet? How are you spending your time every second? What are you doing now? Are you alive, or are you somnambulant?

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 not a big guy anyway. I'm only, what, 150 pounds? I was 190 for 'Batman,' 179 for 'Warrior.' Films make you look big.

My father came from an intellectual and studious avenue as opposed to a brawler's avenue. So I had to go further afield and I brought all kinds of unscrupulous oiks back home - earless, toothless vagabonds - to teach me the arts of the old bagarre.

Every time you need protein, get yourself a boiled egg in. But your main meals would be chicken, or hummus, or white fish. You can lose about a pound a day. But you can do this stuff over a period of time, and you can have your happy days. It's about motivation and it has to be something that's realistic for you to keep up.

I'm incredibly grateful to be playing the villain in a world which, if I really thought to hard about what I was doing, I would get very nervous about the size and the magnitude of the importance and responsibility of being a villain in the world of 'Batman.'

Fame and stuff like that is all very cool, but at the end of the day, we're all human beings. Although what I do is incredibly surreal and fun and amazing and I'm really grateful for it, I don't believe my own press release, do you know what I mean?

If you look round Hollywood there's no end of white smiles and six packs. Long lines of beautiful people lining up to be incredible on film.

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

Nobody paid any attention career-wise to me in America until 'Bronson.' It gave me a calling card and passage into America, where I've always wanted to work.

The lack of carbohydrates can make you a little crazy.

I think online dating is a way of procuring people. Like Facebook and Myspace, it's the way that people connect now and procure small children and sometimes dodgy relationships. I don't think it's very healthy.

I spent my entire experience with Gary [ on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy] staring at him and not returning any lines because I think he's God. The second time [ on The Dark Knight Rises] I was playing God, so I ignored him. Kicked him a bit, that kind of thing. Gary Oldman is one of my heroes, I did nothing but glean from him.

The problem with prime beef is that there are so many people out there selling offal. So you don't know when you're going eat a shitty gangster movie. Because everybody knows there's good stuff to be involved in.

I'd learned how to lie and manipulate from an early age so a combination of that, desperation, having to have my own fridge and my umbilical cord back... I had to go out into the world. Then some angel somewhere said: "Have you considered going to drama school?" And this sounded like the solution to all of my problems.

I liked you better when you were drunk .

A lot of people say I seem masculine, but I don't feel it. I feel intrinsically feminine. I'd love to be one of the boys but I always felt a bit on the outside. Maybe my masculine qualities come from overcompensating because I'm not one of the boys.

I hate publicists and publicity. But I love the people.

Maybe it's a little ambitious of me to presume that no matter how big the film is, that I can always go down to the shop to buy a pint of milk.

If I am duly compared to Marlon Brando at all, well, I can only think of The Teahouse of the 'Shanghai Noon,' that they're comparing me to that!

I'm from a nice, suburban, middle-class family, but my tattoos remind me where I've been.

I have a very busy head. I have inside voices that I have learned to contain.

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.

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.

And I like people. I like to know what you're really up to. I'm a bit of a nosey busy body. Why do they do the things they do? Why are they prepared to do the things they do to get what they want? When? Where? Who?

As actors, we have the opportunity to work with many directors. Directors only work with themselves and other actors. They never know what it is like to work with another director. So that relationship that one has with a director is entirely always the king.

I don't know anything about god except that it's not me. So, somewhere between that acceptance and doing my homework and being competitive and having ambition and loving my job and observing and reflecting my society, that's where I find the purpose. Because man needs purpose.

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.

I guess if I had fifty million dollars I could spend more time at home...

I had a huge imagination. My granddad says I was a bit of a Walter Mitty character.

I had no immediate knowledge of the world of Batman at all. I'm quite incubated. I just keep myself to myself and my dog.

I love dogs. Like, A LOT. They're my favorite animal. Ever.

I love people. People are lovely creatures. I'm one myself [so] I love to see people happy.

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 think it's important that you always transform if you can. That's what I was trained to do. You try and hide yourself as much as you can - that's the key to longevity.

I'm a nice middle class public schoolboy who underachieved and wasn't going anywhere fast. I didn't get any GCSEs or A-levels. But everyone was like: "Please, will you do something?" And I was thinking: "Well, I kind of like the idea of joining the French Foreign Legion."

I'm an armchair psychologist, I suppose, and I like to kind of sit around and guess and pretend I know what's going on.

I'm from East Sheen, I went to public school where I learned Latin at the age of nine, and certain expectations were made of me to go to St Paul's, Oxbridge maybe, and all that kind of thing. And I failed systematically to meet the mark - who I am and what I should have been are two very different things.

I'm going to fail to hit the mark I've put up before me because it's not possible to hit it. I want to be the best at what I do so I've got to get over myself already because that's never going to happen. I ain't ever going to be God.

I'm here to challenge myself and to see whether I can shape-shift in an environment that's actually quite daunting, but which I think would be nice to shine a light into. The destination of any interesting drama is that you shine a light into a place that not many people know about.

It doesn't matter who you are. What matters is your plan.

Ju jitsu is very Buddhist. All that we fear we hold close to ourselves to survive. So if you're drowning and you see a corpse floating by, hang on to it because it will rescue you.

Love is doing something you don't want to do for someone you don't particularly like at that moment.

My job is to show and tell. If I get better at showing and telling then presumably I get hired more.

The only thing I can do is wipe my arse, brush my teeth, turn up and do the best work I can.

There's always a certain pride in getting the job done properly.

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

t's much less daunting once you've put your foot on the road to it. I'm a notorious couch potato and I don't like exercise. Half an hour of physical exercise, like jogging or fast walking a day is a start.

Vanity is normal in performers. Does it bother other people? All the time. But nine times out of 10, that says more about them than you.

We're all flawed human beings and we all have a cauldron of psychosis which we have to unravel as we grow older and find the way we fit in to live our lives as best as possible.

Whatever character you play, remember they are always doing something they are not just talking.

You don't step on stage to eat; you go there to be eaten.