Tom Hardy has shown all his hard man action on the big screen is not all acting after winning two gold medals at a martial arts competition.
The 44-year-old star of Marvel movies, Peaky Blinders and Mad Max was the star of a charity Jiu-Jitsu championship over the weekend and won all his matches at Aldersley Leisure Village in Wolverhampton on Saturday.
This includes a "tap out" from Army veteran opponent Danny Appleton, 40, who admitted he feared his arm would "snap".
Footage has been shared on social media of blue belt Tom against Danny, who hadn't realised he would be facing the film star until the semi-finals of the REORG Open Jiu-Jitsu Championship.
Speaking to LADbible about the fight, which he described as "surreal", Danny said: "I did try my best, but he was just a lot stronger than me, I've got to admit. He's a strong guy and a talented guy, too.
"I've got the story to tell, the kids were there to watch - which was the main thing – and I got a bronze medal - so it's not at all a loss - and I lived to tell the tale."
The army veteran said that he had no choice but to "tap out": "As soon as you know it's straight and it's on – if you don't tap, your arm is going to snap. It's as simple as that."
Tom had embraced training with REORG while preparing for a role as a MMA fighter for Warrior in 2011 and caught the bug for the sport.
The actor learned Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at the time and continued with his training for Venom in 2018, in which the training helped transform his physique.
Tom had a "privileged and peaceful" childhood in South West London, but admitted he had to 'endanger himself'.
“I got arrested at 15 for joyriding in a stolen Mercedes. And for good measure there was a gun in the car,' he revealed to the Daily Mirror back in 2017.
“I just had to endanger myself - it was a kind of self-harming.”
The acclaimed actor got his big break in Steven Spielberg’s TV series Band Of Brothers after being spotted in drama school.
However, Tom was 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."
Despite his demons, Tom has had an incredibly successful acting career with a load of Hollywood films under his belt.
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