Tom Hardy, we get it. You are a diverse and serious talent, who can play a spy or a soldier, a lover or a relatable
But why must you cover your beautiful face?
In Christopher Nolan’s latest, “Dunkirk,” Hardy’s face is covered by a pilot’s mask. We can forgive the one-time lapse, but it’s not one time at all.
Hardy’s roles like “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The Dark Knight Rises” also have him sporting gear that cover up that gorgeous mug. Not that it stops him from delivering a stellar and intense performance, like in the imminent “Dunkirk,” which earned raves from critics in advanced screenings.
Much of the action in the sequence featuring Hardy, a fighter pilot named Farrier, plays out only on his partially covered face as explosions ring out.
“Even with most of his face covered for 99 percent of the movie Tom Hardy managed to out act everyone else in the film with his eyes alone,” one social media user said.
“Good to know ‘Dunkirk’ continues the tradition of viewers only seeing Tom Hardy‘s eyes for a good portion of the film,” wrote another fan.
This is not the first time Nolan has decided to hide Hardy’s gorgeous face behind a mask: In “The Dark Knight Rises,” Hardy played Bane, who wore a mask that covered everything BUT his eyes. Most everyone applauded Hardy’s performance as the infamous villain and he received numerous award nominations for the role, although his voice was muffled — once again, the acting came from the eyes.
Nolan recently spoke to the Press Association about why he decided to hide Hardy’s face in his new movie, saying, “I was pretty thrilled with what he did in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ with two eyes and a couple of eyebrows and a bit of forehead so I thought, let’s see what he can do with no forehead, no real eyebrows, maybe one eye.”
In a separate chat with Yahoo Movies, the director added, “I knew from having worked with Tom as Bane on ‘Dark Knight Rises’ that this is a guy who gave an amazing performance with just a couple eyes and a scalp. So I said, ‘OK, let’s do it again. But this time you’ve got goggles, you’ve got a helmet and everything, you can act with your right eye. Let’s see what you can do with just that.’ And of course what he does with just that is remarkable. But that’s Tom Hardy.”
There’s even a wonderful meme going around about the face phenomenon.
Tom Hardy is The Man in the Mask pic.twitter.com/HpZxMCV9v1
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) June 23, 2017
In the actor’s defense, directors love getting up close and personal with Hardy.
In “The Revenant,” for example, there are mostly close-ups of his face. A stunning breakthrough for Hardy was 2013’s indie “Locke,” where director Steven Knight got a full and dramatic range of emotion from Hardy sitting in the driver’s seat of a car for the entirety of the 90-minute film. In FX’s “Taboo,” his eyes express the crazy in protagonist James Delaney.
“Of course Tom, being Tom, what he does with single eye acting is far beyond what anyone else can do with their whole body, that is just the unique talent of the man, he’s extraordinary,” Nolan told the Press Association.
#Facegate does not have an end in sight.
Hardy is set to play Venom, a Marvel character that’s essentially a muscular parasite with thick, sharp teeth and — you guessed it — a dark reptilian skin covering his face.