#tomhardylife

Tom Hardy’s Foreword to The Men of Warrior

Photographers…I’m making a sweeping generalization here, abhorrent as it may sound, or just unimportant as I am unimportant, but I’ve come into contact with these creatures—these beings, these artists (some). My feelings are subjective, couched simply in jouissance, irrational. Nonetheless, in all honesty, my truth, my absolute truth is: I don’t trust them.

As a breed, on the whole, it’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that I don’t like a lot of their “fashion concept” art; their wanky installation Blow Up scenario push. It doesn’t float my pickle. I sense a delight in all things masturbatory, their printed f_art not worth a scratch of arse. They’re wallop merchants, creative time-wasters, their crews with “shocking” haircuts, traipsing around an “urban” studio in open-toed trainers they’ve never worked out in, 80’s wristbands, and skin-tight T-shirts or stripey stockings over tight jeans or cut-off dungarees—peering through those clumsy clunky red frames with no lenses that MC Serch might have worn (but he needed to see, he had real lenses…I hope).

The whole ordeal makes me want to puke up my innards and drive a nail through them and jump through the window from the fifteenth floor of the meatpacking district studio we’re in, to feel alive for the few seconds it takes me to hit the ground. Why? It’s just my reaction…these shoots give me panic attacks. Of course, this is irrational. I’ve been told I need to play ball with them.

I come across a lot of these creatures in my line of work. I dread being forced to sit in their fuckin’ tree-over-a-beautiful-brook location they just happened to have happened across whilst wandering through the ass end of Belsize Park that morning, fetching a latte to submit to the lipid colony hanging from their protruding fat ass. Or they might take me to the streets of Hachney, to pretend to read poetry in a stariwell: “It’s so street,” they say, and because I’m a “British thesp,” it’s a “juxtaposition.” I hate being told: “Do that thing your character does, with the fists and all so broody,” or “You’re an actor, act for me. Act a part now, be the character, do acting!” while they flounce ‘round waving Polaroids, nibbling celery and hummus, pretending that class A’s are passé.

And the people they talk about I’ve never heard of—ever. But I know very little…Many of this breed are simply morons, charlatans, and like in all the arts, they’re slinging their wares, talking loud, saying nothing, “contributing.” I don’t have the patience for a photographer who hasn’t been to war or something more…well, something more important than fashion (yawn). Funny, because I love all kinds of photos and I get that people like fashion and to each their own. But I, like many other actors (who are just as irritating, I’m sure, to photographers), don’t like being watched. I don’t belong in front of the camera—as myself.

This guy Tim Palen? He was OK… I didn’t mind him so much. I’d do a silly fashion shoot for him…not that he will want me now.

I also find this true of people with guitars.