Austin Butler assumed Tom Hardy was always going to be serious while making their upcoming drama “The Bikeriders,” but it turns out Hardy has the impressive ability to turn on and off his intense persona. The two actors lead Jeff Nichols’ gang drama alongside Jodie Comer. The film, inspired by Danny Lyon’s book, follows the rise and fall of a fictional 1960s motorcycle club in the Midwest. Hardy plays a dangerous mentor figure to Butler.
“After the spectacle of ‘Elvis’ and ‘Dune,’ and these characters that were quite different from me, to be able to go to something where — there’s an intimate sensitivity to ‘The Bikeriders,'” Butler recently told Josh Brolin during a chat for Interview magazine. “It’s the roaring engines and the smell of grease that we got to be around. It was nice to go to something that felt more independent and play in that space for a bit. But one of the things I was thinking about earlier, when you were talking about that relaxation on set, was that Tom Hardy surprised me. I pictured him to be this grizzly bear, always serious. And really, he’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. He’d be joking around until action is called and then go into being the most intense guy I’d ever seen.”
“It reminds me of the stories I heard of [Marlon] Brando, talking to the camera operator until the moment action is called,” Brolin said.
“I learned a lot from Tom,” added Butler. “It reminds me of you, where you can be in that relaxed place where you’re receptive to your environment, and then when the time comes, you can click into what the scene demands. That one was also great because I had a couple of weeks off from ‘Dune.’ I went back, and just started training on the motorcycles every day.”
Disney and 20th Century Studios were scheduled to open “The Bikeriders” in theaters on Dec. 1, but it’s been taken off the calendar for now amid the SAG-AFTRA strike. The film world premiered to strong reviews at the Telluride Film Festival. Michael Shannon, Mike Faist and Norman Reedus round out the ensemble cast.
In PvNew’s review of “The Bikeriders,” chief film critic Peter Debruge praised the lead performances of Butler (“a born movie star”) and Hardy (“giving us two Marlon Brando performances for the price of one”). Without ignoring the dangers of motorcycle gangs, Debruge says “it goes a long way to humanize figures who’ve been long misrepresented on film, while giving audiences privileged access to this inner world.”
