Tom Hardy once revealed he could "destroy everything" in his life after turning to drugs and crime when he was younger.
The Peaky Blinders star, 44, has reprised his Alfie Solomons character in the sixth series of the BBC crime drama, which premiered on February 27. He has been nominated for multiple Oscars and landed leading roles in the likes of The Dark Knight Rises, Dunkirk and Venom but it hasn't always been plain sailing for the actor.
Hardy once spoke of how he checked into rehab in 2003 and became sober aged 25 after drugs and alcohol threatened to "f*ck everything up", the Daily Mirror reports.
The father-of-three told the Daily Mirror in 2017: "If I had four pints of lager and half a bottle of vodka I could turn this room into an absolute f***ing nightmare in about three minutes. I could destroy everything in my life I have worked so hard for.”
Tom had a "privileged and peaceful" childhood in south-west London but admitted it gave him "the instinctive desire to want to f**k everything up".
“I got arrested at 15 for joyriding in a stolen Mercedes. And for good measure there was a gun in the car," he revealed. “I just had to endanger myself - it was a kind of self-harming.”
The acclaimed actor got his big break in Steven Spielberg’s 2001 TV series Band Of Brothers after being spotted in drama school. However, he was also battling a crippling drug addiction.
He revealed: “I would have sold my mother for a rock of crack . . . The police would come, people would beat me up, but it never killed me so I was like, ‘All right, what else you got?’"
When he was interviewed for his role in Venom in 2018, he told Good Morning Britain 's Richard Arnold: "For me obviously I am a bog standard alcoholic, for my whole life, in recovery as it were."
In a 2014 interview with the Mirror, the actor said that when he was 11 the police visited his school and warned his class about the dangers of sniffing glue. But he said he thought: “I know where to find that now – bang.”
At the time he said hallucinogens were “fun and games” and by 13 he had careered off the rails and was dodging the police. He was expelled from his boarding school, Reed’s in Surrey, for stealing, and eventually plunged into an alcohol and crack cocaine addiction which was to govern his life until his mid-20s.
According to Digital Spy, Hardy explained he decided to go to rehab after waking up in a pool of blood and vomit.
"I did something particularly heinous that allowed me to wake up," he said. "I had to lose something. Sometimes you have to lose something that is worth more to you than your drinking."
When he first entered rehab in 2003, Hardy thought about staying for a while and then leaving to go back to drinking. However, after speaking to people in similar situations, he realised he did indeed have a problem. He has been clean since entering rehab, but has revealed he worries that one bad decision could ruin everything for him.
"I love what I do, but it's driven by a fear of not being able to do it," he told Contactmusic. "It's the same with drinking - if I stop then who am I? What have I got? I have to watch that drive."
Thankfully, Hardy has come a long way and has notched up numerous leading roles in major films, as well as awards. He's got quite the form in Wales too, having been spotted a number of times here in recent years while filming and even posing with fans. Read more about that here.
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