Tom Hardy reveals what draws him to playing 'dark' characters: 'I just feel better there'

In his new film The Bikeriders, about a 1960s Midwestern motorcycle club based on Danny Lyon’s photo book of the same name, Tom Hardy’s character Johnny responds to a challenge with three words: “Knuckles or knives?”

The toughness and bravado shown by Johnny, the leader of the fictional Chicago Vandals, is softened only by the scenes that show him also as a devoted husband and father who watches Marlon Brando in The Wild One for tips on how to talk tough.

This isn’t the first time Hardy has embodied a character that straddles the dark side while also earning empathy points in the process. There’s also his dual characters in Venom and Alfie from Peaky Blinders. Hardy has also garnered attention for playing dark characters who aren’t so empathetic, earning an Oscar nomination for his villainous role in The Revenant.

Hardy told Yahoo Entertainment that the choice comes down to picking characters who are “vulnerable” and “infinitely more interesting.”

“I'm an optimist and hopeful that, actually, regardless of any concept of what darkness may or may not be, there's oftentimes a vulnerability and a depth within characters who are infinitely more interesting than somebody who ideologically purports to be some symbolic reference toward good and the light, whatever that is,” he said.

In The Bikeriders, which opens in theaters June 21, Hardy stars alongside Jodie Comer, who plays Kathy, a woman that falls for new bike club member Benny, played by Austin Butler. Kathy struggles as Benny finds it hard to choose between Johnny’s biker brotherhood and her love.

And it’s Hardy’s Johnny — at turns tragic and terrifying — who’s in charge, defending his turf and fellow Vandals by any means necessary. It’s the kind of role that Hardy said appeals to him exactly because it’s not fully dark or light.

“The colors that go between black and white and the binary option of good versus evil is much grayer,” Hardy said. “I get it. I just feel better there. And I feel like I can serve a purpose there rather than pretend that I'm something that I'm not — even though, ironically, I'm pretending to be somebody in the first place anyway.”

The actor and father of three admits that while his upbringing in London was “very bourgeois, suburban, middle class,” his life experiences have drawn him through more spaces that “one might infer as, say, dark when they actually aren’t.”

Instead, Hardy explained, those spaces have more to do with “making life choices that take you to places that are significantly different than the orthodox life that some people's parents might want for them.”

The Bikeriders is in theaters June 21.