Hardy Hairometer: The (long) tale of Tom Hardy’s beard…

Tom Hardy is a chameleon, to say the least. Our Hardy Hairometer (scroll right down) is a permanent feature we’ll be regularly updating, and so we thought it was about time we track the changes so far – the transformation in the past year alone has been pretty spectacular, don’t you think?

To play Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, Hardy shaved his hair (and chest hair by the looks of it… yes, we’re looking that closely) completely, starting work on the film in May 2011 in London. He showed off his newly bulked up and bald look at the Warrior press call in Paris in June, before arriving at the LA premiere of the movie in September with a little regrowth and the beginnings of a goatee. Definitely better than the adult baby look, if you ask us. Due to the Bane mask, a goatee was just about all Tom could get away with while production rolled on until November, and he was spotted heading back to his trailer with a pretty distinctive one on set in New York that month. By December, the actor was at home in London, and went to a English National Ballet party, looking happier with his hair growing back and an even covering of stubble on his face. Dreamy.

The potential of meeting one of his acting idols, Meryl Streep, meant that he attended the London premiere of The Iron Lady in January, and the beard was only getting longer. At February’s This Means War London premiere, (the red scarf pic) frankly, it was all starting to look a bit out of control. Still, by the time the LA premiere of the romcom rolled around it looked like he’d had a bit of a trim. American publicists, we salute you. By this point, he was explaining that he was growing the beard for Mad Max: Fury Road, and telling reporters he was going for a full ‘Captain Haddock’.

Following his Siberia trip (mentioned in the vid and hopefully coming to a TV near us soon – stay tuned), plus a well-earned holiday, Tom re-emerged at an awards ceremony for The Prince’s Trust in March looking tanned and even hairier. At this point we lose track of how long the hair on top of his head is, due to the fact he’s now pushing it back with product to spare. Yet somehow he’s still ridiculously hot, how does he do it? By the time he got to the Cannes Film Festival in May, he was embracing the beard by giving it a good old stroke during his interviews, but either he’d learned how to groom it, or he’d been trimming it again. We’re guessing it’s the second, thanks to the super-entertaining interview he gave Vulture, in which he was asked how long it had taken to grow:

Five months. And I’ve already trimmed it a lot, because people are saying it’s grizzly… Oh, I’m a terrible reader of the Internet and stuff like that.

(Hi Tom!) At Cannes he promoted Lawless with Jessica Chastain and Shia LaBeouf (premiering in the UK in August, at Film 4′s Summer Screen at Somerset House), and by the time he got to the Prometheus London premiere – no, he’s not in it – no one could mistake his alleged doppelgänger Logan Marshall-Green for him, as Tom clearly had the manliest beard there. Michael Fassbender was having a go too.

And that brings us to the present day. Fury Road finally starts filming with Tom and Charlize Theron in July, around the same time that Tom should surely be promoting the final installment in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. How long will the beard stay during filming? Time will tell… But if you’re ever unsure, just come back to Screen Siren and check out our Hardy Hairometer. We’ll watch his hair growth, so you don’t have to.