English actor Tom Hardy was BOTD in 1977. Born in London to a literary family – his father is a novelist and screenwriter and his mother is an artist – he had a respectable middle-class upbringing, and was educated at a series of private schools. He studied at the Drama Centre London, dropping out when he was cast in the World War Two-set TV mini-series Band of Brothers. He made his big screen debut later that year as a soldier in the war film Black Hawk Down. After a series of forgettable film roles, and a spell in rehab to deal with a crack cocaine habit, he returned to London in 2003, appearing naked on stage in the play Blood, winning the London Evening Standard‘s newcomer award. He also appeared in the TV drama The Virgin Queen, a biopic of Elizabeth I. Dropping his private school accent and acquiring several tribal tattoos, he set about becoming the resident hard man of British cinema, emulating his heroes Gary Oldman and Ray Winstone. Within three years, he played the murderer Bill Sikes in a TV adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Heathcliff in a TV film of Emily Brontë‘s novel Wuthering Heights, a drug-addicted rapist in the indie horror film WΔZ and a gay gangster named Handsome Bob in Guy Ritchie’s film RocknRolla. He graduated to leading man status in 2008’s Bronson, a biopic about British career criminal Charles Bronson, attracting media attention for his physical transformation into a tattooed muscleman. In 2010, he appeared in the sci-fi thriller Inception, the first of several collaborations with filmmaker Christopher Nolan. After excellent work in the films Warrior and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he starred as the supervillain Bane in Nolan’s 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises, controversially wearing a mask that muffled most of his dialogue. His other notable roles include playing a Jewish gangster in historical crime TV series Peaky Blinders, the title role in Mad Max: Fury Road; and an amusing dual role as gangsters Reggie and Ronnie Kray in the biopic Legend. He earned his first Oscar nomination playing a bounty hunter in the 2015 film The Revenant, co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 2016, he became a surprise internet sensation reading children’s bedtime stories for the BBC children’s channel CBeebies, unusually appearing fully clothed and not playing a gangster; to date, his episodes have been downloaded over two million times. Since 2018, he has starred in the comic book film franchise Venom, with occasional roles in British independent films. Married and divorced twice, he is now married to Charlotte Riley, his co-star from Wuthering Heights, and has three sons. Despite his alpha male persona, Hardy has also cheerfully admitted to having sex with men (whose identities are unknown, despite extensive research by BOTD Headquarters).