End of the Symbiote: Tom Hardy bids farewell to Venom
Tom Hardy, star of the Venom movies (2018 to 2024), is best known to Marvel comic book fans as the titular two-in-one antihero: a parasitic alien attached to a human host, journalist Eddie Brock, resulting in a dual life form with superpowers.
And, after headlining the first instalment Venom – one of the highest-grossing movies of 2018 with a global haul of US$856 million – the 47-year-old English actor decided to take on the dual role of actor and co-writer for the sequels Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) and Venom: The Last Dance, which opens in Singapore cinemas on Oct 24.
Hardy is known for action blockbusters such as The Dark Knight Rises (2012), in which he played the villain Bane, as well as intense dramas such as the western The Revenant (2015), which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
But Venom is the only feature film role he has also co-written, which allowed him to go deeper with both the storytelling and acting.
“It’s immersive, and I revel more in playing the character because I’m deep in the fibres of it,” he says.
Introducing a sneak peek of the third and final film at New York Comic Con over the weekend, Hardy says: “I’ve absolutely loved playing Eddie and Venom.
“It’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, so it’ll be sad to see them go.”
For Hardy – who also appeared in the post-apocalyptic blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and science-fiction drama Inception (2010) – acting and storytelling through writing are different but complementary arts.
“I’m a face-puller, so it’s not really hard to turn up and pull faces. Acting, for me, is kind of a mimetic art, and that’s a craft in itself.
“But storytelling is super important for many different reasons, and if you’re a storyteller, you’re going to want to be able to do that,” says the performer, who credits writing partner Kelly Marcel with helping to translate his ideas onto the page.
Hardy also enjoyed exploring the mythology of Venom from the Marvel comic books, starting with the 1984 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man that introduced the character.
“When you have an intellectual property or a character as wonderful and deliciously wicked as Venom, there’s the opportunity to play and deepen the challenges you can have as an actor, and to understand it against the huge amount of lore within the comic books.
“It’s like you have this wonderful space to play but also challenge yourself on the screen too,” says Hardy, who is married to English actress Charlotte Riley, 42, and has three children aged five to 16, including one from a previous relationship.
Marcel, who also makes her directorial debut with The Last Dance, says the story picks up where Eddie and Venom were left at the end of the second film.
“They’ve been exposed to the outside world because of a massive fight and now they’re on the run,” says the 50-year-old English screenwriter.
“So Venom: The Last Dance is kind of a road trip movie, as they’re chased not only by people from our world, but also people from another world. The longer they stay together, the more they realise that they’re putting the whole world in jeopardy.”
Hardy is asked how he juggles playing Eddie and Venom – for whom he uses different voices, sometimes in the same scene – while another performer brings its movements to life with the aid of visual effects.
“The actual process is quite technical. I could get really geeky and talk to you about it. But it’s good. When I go to work with myself, I know exactly what I want to do and so I very rarely fall out with myself,” Hardy jokes.
“I started out talking to myself as a child, and I still talk to myself. The nice thing now is I get paid to talk to myself, and I can be bombastic and enigmatic.
“And I can cloak my inner machinations in a huge visual effects monster,” he says.
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