Tom Hardy’s fans have reacted with pleasant surprise after a long-lost ‘rap mixtape’ of music the actor made in the late 1990s re-surfaced online this week.

The 18 tracks on the recording were made in demo form in 1999, but have never seen the light of day until now. A man named Edward Tracy – calling himself Eddie Too Tall – who wrote and produced the set posted it on Bandcamp earlier this week.

Hardy – known and credited under his rap pseudonym ‘Tommy No.1’ – is listed as the writer and performer of the lyrics.

Titled ‘Falling On Your Arse In 1999’, the tracks take samples from movies spanning from The Godfather to The War of the Worlds.

Tom HardyDid you know Tom Hardy was a rapper? Could you have guessed he was pretty good?

This isn’t something that 40 year old Hardy has been embarrassed by in his past – on the contrary, he has spoken openly and proudly about his time as an aspiring rapper. He told BBC’s Newsbeat last year that he started MC’ing when he was “14 or 15” years old, and that he remembered it fondly as “an important time for me to stand on my own and do what I thought was important.”

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Hardy even managed to secure himself a record deal at one point, although nothing eventually came of it because, as he admitted, he “wasn’t very good”.

“I used to be with the guy who managed Leela James and Lauryn Hill, Pras, the Fugees and all that. I worked out with (Grammy-winning producers) Warren Riker and Gordon Williams. I've recorded loads of stuff but it's never been released.”

The big question, then, is can we expect Hardy to step back into his rapping persona and take some of these tracks on the road? Sadly, it looks unlikely.

“Unless I'm playing a rapper in something I can't see myself straying off and doing it. But who knows? Maybe I'll have an album when I'm 80,” he said last year.

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