"Eating entire villages of chickens," laughs Tom Hardy when asked by
Total Film Magazine how exactly he prepared to play the musclebound menace who makes Batman's life a living hell in
The Dark Knight Rises.
"When I started I was about 160-something pounds. When I was done I was 190. You life weights. You eat. You lift some more weights. You don't run anywhere because of you do cardio, you drop weight. So it's really good for heart attacks!" To play Bane, Hardy had to don a mask which covered up almost his entire face, although perhaps most importantly (in terms of his performance) his mouth. However, he tells the magazine,
"It's not as bad as you might think. You just put it on. Work out where your drool goes. That's it. Mask work is good fun. This one wasn't painful; there was a stunt mask and there was the up-close one for the sexy glam shots."
"I will, when I build certain characters, take a soupcon of different things," reveals the British actor.
"Like Kermit The Frog. I'll put a bit of Kermit in there. I'll take Robert De Niro from Taxi Drive, mix him up with animals and different characters, add a voice and then go home. I know my guy. He has a lot of people in it." However, he's quick to point out that he wasn't serious about taking inspiration from a Muppet.
"No, there's no Kermit in Bane. Absolutely [frick]ing not!"
Joseph Gordon-Levitt will play John Blake (a Gotham City police office) in the highly anticipated finale to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, and had this to say about working with the director.
"He prioritises the acting in a way that's really rare for such a high-scale, spectacular production. That even amid all these things that are going on, he made sure that the actors have what they need to create an honest performance, an honest moment. I think that's a big part of why audiences love his movies so much, because they don't feel like a bunch of fireworks. It feels like real stories, real people."
Be sure to pick up the latest issue of
Total Film Magazine in order to read much more from these two as well as the rest of the cast.
STARRING:
Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman
Michael Caine as Alfred
Gary Oldman as Commissioner Jim Gordon
Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox
Tom Hardy as Bane
Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman
Joseph Gordon-Levitt as John Blake
Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate
Josh Pence as Ra's Al Ghul
RELEASE DATE: July 20th, 2012
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