Tom Hardy packed on 30 pounds to become villain Bane in 'The Dark Knight Rises'

The actor also fainted in the summer swelter while he filmed 

a key scene of the Christopher Nolan Batman flick

IT WASN’T all bang! bam! pow! for actor Tom Hardy while playing the hulking villain Bane in 

“The Dark Knight Rises.”

One scene still sticks in his mind.

Hardy as Bane climbed atop the Batmobile to rally a throng of escaped prisoners — and then 

promptly crumpled.

The actor, who packed on 30 pounds of muscle for the film, had fainted in the sweltering summer heat.

“I was wearing that big long gray coat and my body armor,” he told The News at Monday’s 

similarly wilting world premiere of the epic finale of Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy.

“Not that dissimilar to today’s weather. Anyway, I passed out. I was unconscious for most of the 

afternoon.”

Other than that brief setback, however, not much has stood in Hardy’s way.

Not the physically grueling training.

Not the tight mask that was molded for his face, which Bane uses to continually pump gas to 

alleviate otherwise crippling pain.

And not the shadow of the late Heath Ledger’s Academy Award-winning performance as 

Batman’s last arch-nemesis, the Joker, in 2008’s “The Dark Knight.”

Nolan and his screenwriters, Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer, deliberately chose Bane as the 

villain because he was so strikingly different from the Joker.

While Goyer told Empire magazine that some studio execs suggested the Riddler early on, the 

filmmakers had no interest in being derivative.

Where the Joker wanted to mess with Batman’s head, Bane is trying to tear it from the 

superhero’s shoulders.

This is a villain, created by Chuck Dixon, Doug Moench and artist Graham Nolan, who rocked 

comic book fans’ worlds in his 1993 debut by breaking Batman’s back during a fight.

“Bane is the first adversary who you recognize could physically destroy Batman,” says the Dark 

Knight himself, actor Christian Bale.

Although he’s soon to be a name on the lips of millions of moviegoers, it turns out the creators 

of the comic book character originally were planning on calling him Venom — until an editor 

phoned back with some bad news.

“We were embarrassed to find out Spider-Man already had a high-profile villain named 

Venom,” says Moench. “We didn’t know. Chuck pulled thesaurus and found “Bane” was one of 

the synonyms for poison and it’s a great sounding name.”

A great sounding name for a muscular intimidator who seemed right out a Mexican wrestling 

ring. Which is unfortunately a look that doesn’t translate well onto the big screen. (Exhibit A is 

the cartoonish Bane played by Jeep Swenson, and mercifully with little screen time, in 1997’s 

“Batman & Robin.”)

Hardy’s version would be much, much different.

“The Lucha Libre mask? Nolan said ignore that, I have an idea,” says Hardy, laughing. “His 

idea was a lateral take on it, and I didn’t wear the Lucha mask and I didn’t wear the Lycra 

pants.”

With or without Lycra pants, Hardy trained relentlessly for four months to fill his costume before 

cameras started rolling on “The Dark Knight Rises.”

“Tom is one of those actors who’s a transformative actor,” says producer Emma Thomas. 

“When we were doing costume fittings for Bane, for example, he’d come in — and this is 

before he had put on much of the bulk — he would walk in and he’d look quite slim and 

slender… then he would hold his body in a different way and sort of stick his gut out, do 

something with his shoulders and suddenly you’d see exactly what it is he’s going to do.”




Source: nydailynews.com