The Men Of Hollywood

Age: 32. Provenance: Hammersmith, London.

Diet Hard: Having already played a Guy Ritchie thug in RocknRolla and delivered a shocking performance as a tormented prisoner in Bronson, and even further beefed up his bruiser résumé with a role as a martial-artist in the soon-to-be-released Warrior — Hardy has now landed the lead in Mad Max 4: Fury Road, George Miller's reboot of his Mad Max series. “So far I have dropped 28 pounds and I've got another 10 to go,” Hardy says. “We've got two months out in the desert, where we'll be working and grafting and chiseling away at the body. It's going to be a very physically intense part.”

And If That Doesn't Sound Broody and Intense Enough … Hardy shares the screen this month with Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard in Inception, Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated (and deeply shrouded) mind-bending new film. “He was very cloak-and-dagger about the whole thing,” Hardy says of the director. “A lot of us were in the dark, even on set. People didn't even know what was going on day to day. But Chris knew exactly what was going on.”

So Inception's Plotline Is …? “All I can tell you: it's an epic high-octane espionage thriller with a twist."

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