Tom Hardy's bizarre first encounter with Madonna
Tom Hardy has grown accustomed to rubbing shoulders with famous faces, but his first encounter with the 'Queen of Pop' was a strange one.
(Credit: Alamy)
Film » Cutting Room Floor
Fri 24 January 2025 5:30, UK
Rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous is part and parcel of being a successful actor, something Tom Hardy has presumably gotten better at as his career progresses.
Diving right into the world of high-profile productions from high-powered auteurs, Hardy’s first credit in a feature film came as part of the ensemble for Ridley Scott’s boots-on-the-ground Black Hawk Down, while his first bow on the small screen was on the Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks-created Band of Brothers.
He was merely a cog in the wheel in both respects, though, only for his first time playing a major role in a Hollywood blockbuster to go straight to his head. Patrick Stewart questioned why the young upstart constantly maintained such a distance from his veteran colleagues on the set of Star Trek: Nemesis, and he didn’t think he’d ever see or hear of Hardy again after their time working together.
Of course, that wasn’t the case, and the actor would be the first to admit that a combination of nervousness, shyness, ego, and substance issues contributed to him self-sabotaging his first shot at glory. However, he wouldn’t let it happen a second time, although he remained susceptible to being starstruck on the odd occasion.
In his last release before the career-altering Bronson, Hardy joined Guy Ritchie for the labyrinthine crime thriller RocknRolla. At the time, the filmmaker was married to the reigning ‘Queen of Pop’, so there was always a chance the fresh-faced star would end up bumping into Madonna. When he did, he went about it strangely: fleeing the scene and hiding in the back of a car.
“She left me starstruck,” he confessed. “I did what anyone who can’t deal with the situation does: I went and hid in a Range Rover.” Undeterred by his nervousness, Madonna decided that she was going to be introduced to Hardy one way or another, whether he liked it or not.
“I was sort of prepping for the scene in there, and someone said hello to me, and it was her: she’d somehow managed to get into the back of it,” he continued. “Then we had a conversation, which I’ve completely blacked out of because there she was, like the Mother Mary in the boot of the Range Rover, and I was completely starstruck.”
These days, Hardy probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid if he crossed paths with one of the world’s most well-known singers. Things were a lot different two decades ago, and he couldn’t have predicted that running away from Madonna would only encourage her to track him down and make sure they had a chat at all costs, regardless of whether it was standing upright or cramped in the back of a Range Rover.
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MadonnaTom Hardy