Tom Hardy by James Haydock

Author:James Haydock [James Haydock]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782190219
Publisher: John Blake
Published: 2012-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

TOM: A CAREER TRANSFORMED

‘Tom is a shape shifter. His best work is done when he is entering into a character that isn’t himself.’ These words were spoken by Tom’s friend, the director Robert Delamere, and never was the actor’s transformative ability more in evidence than when he took on first the role of Stuart Shorter in Stuart: A Life Backwards and then Charles Bronson, Britain’s most notorious prisoner, in Bronson. These two utterly contrasting roles were pivotal in shifting Tom’s career up a gear and marked the beginning of his metamorphosis from jobbing actor to big star.

Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters was published in 2005 and went on to become an unlikely bestseller. It was an unconventional book in many ways. Its hero was, at first glance, something of an anti-hero – a homeless man with multiple drug addictions; an alcoholic with a disturbed mind who was prone to unpredictable bouts of rage. The book also fell somewhere between biography and memoir – plus, as its title suggests, it tells the story of a life in reverse chronological order.

Masters first encountered Stuart in 1998 in Cambridge, where they both lived – albeit in very different circumstances. Masters was a writer who worked part-time as a fundraiser for Wintercomfort, a day shelter for rough sleepers in the city. When the two people who ran the shelter were wrongfully arrested and imprisoned over drug-dealing allegations at Wintercomfort (it was in fact some of the homeless people who used the centre who were dealing drugs on the premises, unbeknown to the managers), Alexander was, rightly, incensed at what had happened and launched a campaign to Free the Cambridge Two. It was at one of the meetings about the appeal that he met Stuart and the two became unlikely friends.

At the start of the book, Masters describes Stuart as a ‘thief, hostage taker, psycho and sociopathic street raconteur, my spy on how the British chaotic underclass spend their troubled days at the beginning of the 21st century’. He was at first fascinated by Stuart but, as he came to spend more time with him, a genuine friendship evolved between them. Masters was intrigued by Stuart’s life and what had made him the man he became, so persuaded Stuart to let him write his life story. The first draft took two years to complete but was rejected by its subject. Stuart felt that the structure of the story was boring and that it should be more like a murder mystery, where the plot builds towards the revelation. As he put it, he wanted the reader to discover ‘what murdered the boy I was…’.

Although the subject matter is not the usual sort of fodder for a biography/memoir, the book was a hit and went on to win awards, including the Guardian First Book Award in 2005. The critical acclaim and healthy sales were thoroughly deserved: the book’s structure was unique and captivating, and the author’s depiction of Stuart inspired tears, laughter and frustration – we see Stuart through Alexander’s eyes and we feel for him as the author does.

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