“Oh, you think darkness is your ally. But you merely adopted the dark; I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!”
Chances are you read the above dialogue in your best “Bane voice.” Academy Award-nominated actor Tom Hardy has received attention for how he uses his voice as an actor, most notably for his portrayal of the supervillain Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Hardy’s Bane is a physically imposing figure, but is all the more memorable because of the way Hardy voiced the masked character. Once again Hardy has been recognized for his vocal abilities in an acting role for his Chicago accent in the film The Bikeriders. In an interview with Variety, Hardy touched upon why creating a “vocal silhouette” for his characters is so important to him.
For Hardy, finding a character’s unique “voice” is something that he considers essential to committing to a character. He explains, “What’s important to me is that if you’re doing something as an actor, if you’re going to commit, then make the effort to fully commit, even if you fail. It doesn’t matter. I’d rather go out swinging, trying something to make the effort, than not make the effort at all, because there doesn’t seem to be any point in playing safe.”
That point-of-view is what brings him to a character’s particular voice. He continues, “One of the things that I hold myself to, as a principle, is that you’ve got to make an effort to create a vocal silhouette, as well as the physical silhouette. Accent work is not about phonetics or being accurate, to me. It’s about conjuring an atmosphere from a place which is authentic.”
