Coming into a franchise as long-standing and with such a fanatical following as Star Trek was never going to be easy, and any actor doing so would be sure to elicit a vociferous response from Trekkies. The original television series aired back in 1966 and, since then, the format has been reinvented for new generations of fans. After the original series, the show was recast as Star Trek: The Next Generation, which ran from 1987 to 1994.
The 2002 film, Star Trek: Nemesis, was the 10th film in the Star Trek franchise and the fourth (and final) one to feature the characters from the television series of Next Generation. The plot of Nemesis unfolds as the Starship Enterprise undertakes a journey to a planet called Romulus, the Star Fleet crew believing that the Romulans want to broker peace and negotiate a truce. As they head towards the Romulan Empire, they discover a villainous clone of the Enterprise’s captain, Jean-Luc Picard (played by Patrick Stewart) who is planning an attack on Earth. The clone, Shinzon (played by Tom), is the result of an experiment conducted by the Romulans in an attempt to take Picard’s place on the Enterprise and use the clone as a spy – but after a change in Romulan government, the clone plan is shelved and Shinzon is sent to Remus as a slave. Having been cast aside on Remus, Shinzon plots his power grab. According to Patrick Stewart, the original intention was not for there to be a clone but for Picard to find a long-lost son, but the actor, amongst others, felt that this might make for too sentimental a storyline.
The story raises interesting issues, such as how far a person’s character is formed from their genetic blueprint and to what degree they are influenced by their environment. Shinzon is theoretically the same as Picard but has grown up surrounded by beings from different races – and has been treated badly by them.
From the outset, director Stuart Baird and producer Rick Berman had clear ideas about the kind of actor they were looking for to play Shinzon. For a start, the character is a clone of Picard (albeit 25 years younger), so the right candidate had to bear some resemblance to him. He also needed to be an actor with the ability to tap into the darker side of human nature in order to portray a complex and tortured villain. Additionally, the actor in question had to be assured enough to star opposite not only one of the most respected actors of his generation but also the man who had so successfully inhabited the skin of Captain Picard for 16 years.
The search for Shinzon was a lengthy one, with the part at one point apparently being intended for Jude Law. Baird ultimately decided, though, that he wanted an unknown actor for the part. Also paramount was to find someone with sex appeal and who would attract younger fans to the film. Casting directors scoured the UK for their man and six actors were screen tested for the role before they eventually alighted upon Tom, who turned out to have just the right ingredients for the part. ‘He had an edge … a street feel,’ said Baird.
The audition process, though, was anything but easy. At the time of casting, Tom was still out in Morocco filming Simon, An English Legionnaire. It transpired that his agent had been contacted by Patrick Stewart who wanted to find out if she knew of any actors who would be a reasonable fit for the part of Picard’s evil clone. She knew just the young man and, naturally, Tom jumped at the chance to take on a major Hollywood role. Particular pages from the script were sent out to him in Morocco but, true to his non-conformist style, he managed to get hold of the script in its entirety and elected to use other parts of it for the audition tape he was making. Even more unconventionally, he chose to deliver some of the dialogue to camera in the nude. The maverick nature of his tape appealed to Stuart Baird and also to Patrick Stewart, who commented: ‘I was riveted by it and Rick [Berman] was too… I said, “There’s something very odd about this fellow, but I think we should see him.”’ Having made quite an impression, Tom got the call to go to LA for a screen test.
Poised for what could be his big break into Hollywood, Tom was understandably nervous and, on his arrival in LA, was unexpectedly given the full Tinseltown star treatment. The night before the screen test, he was whisked from the airport to a sumptuous hotel in a chauffeur-driven limousine. Unable to believe his luck, he got out his video camera and excitedly filmed his luxurious room as a memento to show his wife, Sarah, and family back at home. ‘And then, suddenly, I realised it was a school day next day. I had serious work to do. Prepare. Panic, panic. So I filmed myself doing my serious work – which is something I do – going through the script again. It was just in case… Whatever happened in this screen test, I’ve got this on tape, doing my stuff in a relaxed environment – how I want to play this character,’ he explained to SFX magazine.
Unfortunately for Tom, the following day, his nerves got the better of him and the screen test turned out to be little short of disastrous. ‘I was supposed to be this incredible villain and instead I’m a quivering nervous wreck, waiting to be exposed and sent back to Britain. Then Patrick Stewart comes in dressed as Picard in his Star Fleet uniform and we did the scene and it was terrible, I mean awful, I was appalling,’ he told the Sun in 2002.
Despite the disappointing performance, Tom was determined not to lose out on the part and insisted that Baird take a look at the character and script work he had recorded on his camera the previous night. His preference would have been for the director to have seen only his acting, not the part of the tape in which he had been showing off his Hollywood hotel and, as he put it, ‘messing around in my boxers.’ Unfortunately, there were no videotape editors on hand at the studio to extract the relevant part of the tape, so Tom was obliged to hand it over in its entirety, scantily-clad antics and all. One can only imagine the dreadful sinking feeling he must have experienced as the handed over the tape. Having resigned himself to having blown his big chance, he was pleasantly surprised when he was offered the part a few days later.
Winning the part was just the first step of a challenging process. Tom has admitted that, while he was aware of Star Trek, he had never been a Trekkie, so had to immerse himself in the programme’s history and characters. He was also acutely aware of the pressure that came with a major role in a big-budget franchise film: ‘To be 23 or 24 and have that kind of money on my shoulders… I thought, if you f**k this up, Hardy… to be aware you’re holding that kind of weight – it was a huge deal for me,’ he explained to the Sunday Times in 2006.
When it came to taking Shinzon from script to screen, it was clear that he would not succeed as a character in his own right if he was played as simply an impression of Picard. While Tom did pay attention to certain physical aspects of the Picard character, when it came to the essence of Shinzon, he brought his own interpretation to the nature of his villainy. In an interview with IGN Movies, Tom explained how he set about differentiating Shinzon from Picard so that he might give him some depth: ‘In order to make this gentleman three-dimensional as opposed to one-dimensional, I had to find a human issue on him. And that means I don’t have to copy or mimic anything that Patrick does at all. Which is very free, because then all the sudden [sic] you have a foundation to develop a character.’
Later in his career, Tom would garner huge acclaim for his powerhouse performances as dark or disturbed characters (Oliver Twist’s Bill Sikes, Charles Bronson, The Take’s Freddie Jackson). His success in bringing these kinds of characters to life is in part down to his skill at seeing both the light as well as the shade in the characters he plays. He has explained that, if a character he is studying is essentially a dark character, he searches for the light in him and vice versa. Preparing for Shinzon – one of the first of such types he was to take on for the big screen – was no different. A hard worker and an actor who always strives to do better, Tom threw himself into capturing the opposing forces that made Shinzon complex and three-dimensional. Speaking to the LA Times, he commented: ‘He’s a monster, but he’s also a product of circumstances who’s deeply in pain.’ Thankfully, the new Star Trek villain was in very capable hands. There would be no pantomime baddie performance from Tom.
Looks-wise, Tom and Patrick Stewa
rt were not dissimilar – Stewart even commented that Tom was ‘the spitting image of me as a young man’ – but Tom’s physical appearance still had to be tweaked so that he genuinely looked as if he could have been created from the same DNA as his nemesis. One of the most noticeable things about Patrick Stewart’s – and therefore Picard’s – appearance is his baldness, so the hair clearly had to go. This was not a problem, as Tom had not long had his hair shaved off for his role in Simon: An English Legionnaire and so was no stranger to sporting a hairless pate. Tom’s lips were, unsurprisingly, slightly bigger that Stewart’s and this difference was addressed by making a fake scar for Tom’s mouth which gave his lips a look that was, as he put it, ‘slightly beaten’. The make-up team then went even further and took a cast of Patrick Stewart’s nose and chin to make latex replicas of them for Tom to wear. Tom explained the lengths to which they went in order to achieve the likeness to Trekweb.com: ‘We moulded the nose – several thousand noses, I think – before we got the right nose. Then, because my lips are slightly larger, we added a scar to take down the size of my lips. We had all this ready to go in latex but we had gelatine as well and under the lights my nose would sort of grow – and then sag.’
And while the costume Tom had to wear for the film was somewhat uncomfortable, he claimed its restrictive design actually assisted with his embodiment of the character of Shinzon. ‘It was incredibly uncomfortable, and within that being uncomfortable it added to the character for me. You know what I mean? Because he’s a very bowed and repressed young man. That whole suit was very constricting and it didn’t allow much movement because his whole life hasn’t allowed much movement,’ he explained to IGN Movies website. It certainly looked impressive on screen in all its rubber glory, but its spectacular appearance came at a price and Tom admitted that he’d needed physio on his back after spending so many hours encased in it!
Naturally, when it came to being on set, Tom spent the majority of his time working alongside Patrick Stewart. The young actor was conscious of the fact that he was relatively new to the game and, while it was a daunting prospect to star opposite someone as esteemed as Stewart, he took the opportunity to benefit from the wealth of the older actor’s experience. The pair took the time to sit and talk through their thoughts on what would work for their characters and Tom allowed himself to learn from the more seasoned actors around him. While on set, Stewart had plenty of time for Tom, but was mindful of the fact that, because of the nature of their on-screen relationship, it would be wise to keep a bit of distance between them: in other words, it wouldn’t benefit the dynamic of the film if they were to become best mates. ‘I didn’t want him to be someone I could have a beer with. It would have showed. But I liked him a lot,’ Stewart remarked.
As well as being relatively new to professional acting, Tom also had to cope with being a late addition to a long-established family of actors, the majority of whom were all Star Trek old hands. Although they were inclusive and welcoming, Tom realised that, by stepping into the scenario as a villain, it was slightly easier for him to establish himself amongst them. The nature of his role meant that it was acceptable for him to fall outside the camaraderie of the main group of actors. ‘It was a group who are very accepting … It was quite bizarre having so many people who knew what they were doing – it was lucky that I was a villain, in many ways,’ he said.
There was one cast member in particular with whom Tom got on like a house on fire. Ron Perlman, who plays the Reman viceroy Vkruk in the film, is an experienced Hollywood actor who has appeared in countless movies and television series. Since Star Trek: Nemesis, Perlman is best known to cinema audiences for his role in the Hellboy movie franchise. Tom found it a pleasure to work with Perlman and has stated how generous and funny he was as a colleague on set. In more recent years, Perlman has expressed how much he enjoyed spending time with Tom and how delighted he is that Tom is now so in demand as an actor. Speaking to Startrek.com to commemorate the eight-year anniversary of the release of Star Trek: Nemesis, Perlman reflected generously: ‘Tom has become probably one of the most sought-after actors in the world. Did you see this movie he did, Bronson? It was brilliant. And now Tom is in everything. I loved him when I first met him. I loved working with him. I found him to be really smart, really a great kid. He was much younger then. He was also really humble and knew that he was kind of living a charmed life by playing major roles in major motion pictures. Everything I like about an actor was in this kid, and I’m so happy to see what’s happening to him now.’
Once the film had wrapped, Tom had a promise to keep before he flew home to the UK. He had told his agent, Lindy King, that if she got him into Hollywood, he would honour her by having her name tattooed on his arm. If you look closely, on the inside of Tom’s left arm, just above the elbow joint, you can see Lindy’s name just below a tattoo of a crown.
Amongst the Star Trek fraternity, there exists a theory that even-numbered Star Trek films are always good. Sadly, this theory didn’t hold water when it came to their opinions of Star Trek: Nemesis which, as the 10th movie in the series, should by rights have been a cracker. Amongst Trekkies, there were rumblings of discontent when it came to light that director Stuart Baird was not intimately acquainted with existing material and apparently hadn’t attempted to do any research in the same way that other new Trek directors had in the past. On the whole, fans seemed to find the film bland and unimaginative.
For critics, their disapproval largely arose from the fact that the Next Generation part of the franchise was now past its sell-by date, and Star Trek: Nemesis seemed to have made no effort to breathe new life into it. As Anthony Quinn quipped in the Independent: ‘It’s another Star Trek movie, the 10th in a series that’s still boldly going where most franchises would have called it a day.’
In fact, the film did signal the end of the Next Generation series and was judged by Patrick Stewart to be ‘a suitable farewell. A number of us feel we don’t want to outstay our welcome.’ It appeared they may have already done just that.
Although the film did not fare well from the sharp tongues of the critics, Tom was widely praised for his performance. He even won himself a nomination for a Saturn Award from the Academy of Science Fiction and Fantasy in the Best Supporting Actor category (the award was ultimately won by Sean Astin for his part in the third instalment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King). The British media jumped on the role of Shinzon as being Tom’s big break and proclaimed him to be the next big thing in British acting. Variety wrote that he showed ‘charisma in a stock villain role that should (given the circumstances) have been written with more dimensionality.’
One American critic, Michael Kleinschrodt described him as the film’s ‘best surprise,’ going on to say: ‘The young man has no trouble holding his own in scene after scene opposite Stewart, a fair indication that he might just have a stellar career ahead of him.’ It was a reasonable assumption to make, given the awesome show of talent from the young actor so far. And Tom did have a ‘stellar career’ ahead of him – but it would take almost a decade for him to get everything in the right place and show the world what he was capable of.
Star Trek was not the only project Tom had been working on at this time, but it was without doubt the most high profile and it brought with it the burden of expectation. Unfortunately, the next few releases with his name attached to them were either unremarkable or Tom’s role in them was something of a ‘blink and you miss him’ experience. None of the films provided that vital stepping stone he needed to capitalise on his new-found recognition.
The Reckoning, released in 2003, is a medieval murder mystery with an impressive cast headed up by Willem Dafoe and Paul Bettany. The plot concerns a priest (Bettany) who flees his village after being caught having sex with a married woman. Whilst on the run, he encounters a travelling theatre troupe that traverses the country performing morality plays. They reluctantly allow him to join and subsequently find themselves at the centre o
f a genuine murder mystery. Tom’s role in the film is that of a member of the travelling players. It’s not a lead role and he’s very much in the background of the action. The one thing that may just spark a bit of interest among Hardy devotees is that his character is more often than not required to take on the parts of female characters in the morality plays, so he is often dressed in women’s clothing and sporting make-up on camera. Excerpts for a ‘before they were famous’ set of clips in the future, perhaps.
In the promotional puff, Dot the I was billed as a love story with a psychological twist. While at first it seems to be the intriguing tale of a love triangle, it eventually descends into a rather silly plot in which the denouement takes on more importance than the characters involved. Writing in Variety, David Rooney was pretty categorical in his dismissal of the film, commenting: ‘Behind its slick veneer and the glibness of its preposterous premise and dark twists, there’s a yawning absence of charm or substance in this London-set love triangle, as well as a lack of chemistry between its three leads.’ The three lead characters were played by Gael Garcia Bernal, James D’Arcy and Natalia Verbeke, while Tom’s character (also called Tom) was a more minor role and was, along with Charlie Cox, Kit’s (Bernal) friend. Between the two of them, they provided some light-hearted relief from the mayhem of the rest of the story.
Tom Hardy Page 4
