Tom Hardy compares dual 'Venom' role to mental illness

Tom Hardy will be making his Marvel debut in Sony’s new Venom movie and in it, he’ll be once again playing a double role.

The British actor, who played Kray twins Ronnie and Reggie in 2015’s Legend, stars as Eddie Brock, an American investigative journalist, who ends up having to share his body with a malevolent alien parasite.

Hardy has said that this dual performance is like the double personification of mental illness.

“To me, it’s exciting because it’s a double act,” Hardy told Esquire. “The character has an ethical framework, the alien by virtue of coming from another planet doesn’t have the same ethical framework, and they have to work out how to be together so they click.”

“He now has a beast who lives rent-free in him,” the actor added. “It could be like somebody who’s contracted a tropical disease and gone mad.

“It’s like acting out mental illness in some aspects, of which I have a fair understanding, having had a certain amount of mental health problems of my own, which are relevant, being an addict. So I might as well f**king use it.”

Venom is set in San Francisco and follows Brock’s investigation into the Life Foundation, run by Riz Ahmed’s Carlton Drake, and its illegal experiments on humans with the Symbiote, an alien parasite that landed on Earth.

Eddie becomes infected by one of the symbiotes thus becoming Venom, the Jekyll to his Hyde, who is more than a handful when it comes to the entity’s mission to seemingly kill everyone in sight.

Michaelle Williams co-stars in the film as does Woody Harrelson and Jenny Slate.

Venom is expected in cinemas on 5 October

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