Tom Hardy Shares the Surprising Inspiration for His 'Revenant' Accent

The ever-changing accents of British actor Tom Hardy are becoming something of legend. “No one changes the timbre, the inflection, the quaking gurgle in his voice the way Hardy does,” Grantland’s Sean Hennessy wrote in a 2014 piece entitled “The Growing Menagerie of Bizarre Tom Hardy Accents.” And that was before this year’s trio of bizarre brogues in Mad Max: Fury Road (“Australian growl”), Legend (as the Kray twins, he used a “a low, guttural, thick East End accent for Ronnie, and a sweet, charming, low tenor for Reggie”), and now, The Revenant (which we’ll call “mid-Atlantic mountain man”).

“Some people have different acts, don’t they? Or a different pair of shoes. Or some different jewelry. I like to throw a different voice on there,” Hardy told Yahoo Movies at the press day for his new Western thriller co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio (watch above). “Of course [it’s by design]. If you’re going to transform, you’ve gotta make the effort.”

While many of his accents have left us guessing when it came to their origins, Hardy was forthright about his inspiration for John Fitzgerald, the frontiersman who leaves DiCaprio’s character Hugh Glass for dead in the movie.

Hardy told us Fitzgerald’s drawl was taken from a memorable character in Oliver Stone’s 1986 Vietnam War drama Platoon. He based it “a little bit on Tom Berenger’s character Sergeant Barnes in Platoon. I wanted a little bit of him because I loved that character, and I wanted to pay a little tribute and homage to him.”

The Revenant is now in select cities and opens nationwide Jan. 8.

Watch DiCaprio describe eating raw bison liver: