One of the most versatile actors in cinema at the moment, Tom Hardy has peppered his career with blockbusters like 'The Dark Knight Rises', indie dramas like 'Locke' and the gritty thrillers such as 'The Drop'. Now he blasts onto the screen as Mad Max in 'Fury Road', filling the shoes of Mel Gibson's most iconic role.

Tom Hardy in 'Mad Max: Fury Road'Tom Hardy in 'Mad Max: Fury Road'

"In all honesty, it would be ridiculous to pick up where Mel left off," Hardy laughs. "He is Mad Max. I have to bring something entirely different and new to the stage."

Known for being both outspoken and self-deprecating, Hardy says he was happy to take on Max, who he estimates has fewer than 20 lines of dialogue in 'Fury Road', because he's more interested in Max's inner life. "He has humanity within him still, despite the hopelessness of his environment," Hardy says. "He has no home and he has no hope, but he's reluctant to give in."

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And he was also drawn to the scale of the production. "I've never been more excited and out of my comfort zone," he says of the pressure riding on his shoulders to reinvent the franchise. Although it helped that the film was shot over nearly seven months in the Namibian desert. "We were in the middle of nowhere, far away from the studio system," Hardy says. "It was very weird. It was fantastic."

Watch The Trailer For 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Here:

In this isolated location, he enjoyed getting lost in the chaos of filmmaker George Miller's imagination. "It was just this unit in the middle of x-million square kilometres of desert," he laughs, "and then this group of lunatics in leathers, like a really weird S&M party, or a Hell's Angels convention. It was like Cirque du Soleil meets Slipknot!"

And even as he admits being difficult to work with because of his perfectionism, he also knows that he's lucky to be an actor. "There's no life or death here, just humiliation," he says, "That's the worst thing that could happen. It's just the first day of school. If you get beaten up on the playground, you still have to go back to school."

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