Hardy described Venom as having "a beast who lives rent-free in him"
Tom Hardy has opened up about playing the role of Marvel villain Venom ahead of the film’s release on October 5.
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The Spider-Man spin-off will see Hardy play freelance photographer Eddie Brock (who becomes the titular Venom), Riz Ahmed as Dr. Carlton Drake and Michelle Williams as Anne Weying.
Speaking of preparing for the character, Hardy said it was exciting “because it’s a double act.”
“The character has an ethical framework, the alien by virtue of coming from another planet doesn’t have the same ethical framework, and they have to work out how to be together so they click,” he told Esquire.
“He now has a beast who lives rent-free in him,” he continued. “It could be like somebody who’s contracted a tropical disease and gone mad.
“It’s like acting out mental illness in some aspects, of which I have a fair understanding, having had a certain amount of mental health problems of my own, which are relevant, being an addict. So I might as well f**king use it.”
“I’m used to being in the third person,” he continued. “I think I have multiple personas and characters in me that present and represent different parts of me, that I allow to sit in the driving seat. They’re all me.”
A new trailer for Venom, released last week, showed Hardy taken over by his nightmarish Venom alter-ego in the most detail to date.
The gore-filled trailer reveals Hardy’s symbiote to be a nightmarish beast who causes uncontrollable carnage far and wide.
Hardy is seen as half-man, half-beast in one scene that focusses on his gruesome, uncontrollable transformation into the big-teethed villain.
He also devours various victims, taking on a group of armed police and struggling to escape his symbiote. In one clip, Hardy’s character threatens to crush a man until he looks “like a legless, faceless turd.”
The post Tom Hardy says he channeled his own mental health problems for the role of Venom appeared first on NME.
