Tom Hardy on 'rude' journalist: 'If you knew me as a friend, then we’d talk'

Hollywood hard man Tom Hardy has been all over this headlines this week after footage of him brutally shutting down a journalist during a Q&A session for his new gangster film Legend caused a firestorm of controversy.

Appearing at a Q&A for the new film at the Toronto International Film festival on Saturday (September 12), Hardy was involved in an excruciatingly awkward exchange with a Daily Xtra journalist who asked him about playing bisexual Reggie Kray and what that had to do with *those* oft-rehashed quotes from a 2008 Attitude interview in which he spoke about experimenting with guys in his youth.

Daily Xtra has since defended its line of questioning after widespread public and media criticism, saying that as an LGBT news outlet it has a “responsibility to examine sexuality… once it’s in the public eye.” However, speaking publicly about the controversy for the first time in an interview with the Daily Beast, Hardy has said he believes “everybody is entitled to the right to privacy”.

“I’m under no obligation to share anything to do with my family, my children, my sexuality—that’s nobody’s business but my own,” the Dark Knight Rises star said. “And I don’t see how that can have anything to do with what I do as an actor, and it’s my own business.

“If you knew me as a friend, then sure, we’d talk about anything. But that was a public forum, and for someone to inelegantly ask a question that seemed designed entirely to provoke a reaction, and start a topic of debate…

“It’s important destigmatising sexuality and gender inequality in the workplace, but to put a man on the spot in a room full of people designed purely for a salacious reaction? To be quite frank, it’s rude. If he’d have said that to me in the street, I’d have said the same thing back: “I’m sorry, who the fuck are you?'”

He went on: “What he had to talk about was actually interesting, but how he did it was so inelegant. And I appreciate that I could probably have more grace as a human being, but I’m just a bloke. I’m just a man. And I’m just a man doing a job. I’m not a role model for anyone, and you’re asking me something about my private life in a room full of people. I don’t want to discuss my private life with you. I don’t know you! Why would I share that with a billion people?

“Also, if you felt it was so important for people to feel confident to talk about their sexuality, why would you put somebody on the spot in a room full of people and decide that was the time for them to open up about their sexual ambiguity? There’s also nothing ambiguous about my sexuality, anyway. I know who I am. But what does that have to do with you? And why am I a part of something now that, however legitimate, I haven’t offered my services for?

“It’s not about what he and his publication stands for, none of that is offensive, and on the contrary, it’s very admirable, and an important issue. But how I was asked was incredibly inelegant, and I just thought it was disrespectful and counterproductive to what he stands for.”

Tom Hardy on ‘rude’ journalist: ‘If you knew me as a friend, then we’d talk’

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