Patrick Stewart didn't think 'odd' Tom Hardy would make it as an actor after “Star Trek: Nemesis”
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In the 2002 sci-fi movie Star Trek: Nemesis, Patrick Stewart and Tom Hardy's characters shared a deep connection — but the same couldn't be said of the actors themselves.
In Stewart's new memoir, Making It So, the veteran Star Trek performer, 83, acknowledges that Nemesis was one of his weaker outings as Starfleet officer Jean-Luc Picard and recalls that Hardy, who played a young Picard clone named Shinzon, didn't make much of an impression on him at the time.
"Nemesis, which came out in 2002, was particularly weak," Stewart writes, according to Insider. "I didn't have a single exciting scene to play, and the actor who portrayed the movie's villain, Shinzon, was an odd, solitary young man from London. His name was Tom Hardy."
Everett Collection Tom Hardy and Patrick Stewart in 'Star Trek: Nemesis'
Hardy, who was 25 and not yet a movie star when Nemesis hit theaters, didn't develop a bond with the rest of the cast, according to Stewart: "Tom wouldn't engage with any of us on a social level. Never said, 'Good morning,' never said, 'Goodnight,' and spent the hours he wasn't needed on set in his trailer with his girlfriend."
That's not to say Stewart harbored any ill will. "[Hardy] was by no means hostile," he writes, "it was just challenging to establish any rapport with him."
Hardy's demeanor ultimately led Stewart to make a sweeping pronouncement about his fledgling career. "On the evening Tom wrapped his role, he characteristically left without ceremony or niceties, simply walking out of the door," Stewart writes. "As it closed, I said quietly to Brent [Spiner] and Jonathan [Frakes], 'And there goes someone I think we shall never hear of again.' It gives me nothing but pleasure that Tom has proven me so wrong."
Hardy, of course, has gone on to star in critically acclaimed films and major blockbusters, including Bronson, The Dark Knight Rises, and Mad Max: Fury Road, in addition to earning an Oscar nomination for a supporting role in The Revenant.
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