Austin Butler calls Tom Hardy ‘the most intense guy’ he’s ever worked with

Actors co-star in Jeff Nicols’ forthcoming drama, ‘The Bikeriders’

Austin Butler has recalled Tom Hardy’s impressive ability to become “the most intense guy [he’s] ever seen” once the cameras start rolling.

The two co-star in Mud director Jeff Nicols’ forthcoming drama, The Bikeriders, which follows an American motorcycle gang in the Midwest.

Jodie Comer, Norman Reedus and Mike Faist also star.

In a recent conversation with Josh Brolin for Interview Magazine, Butler, 32, discussed what it was like working alongside Hardy, 46, for the first time.

“I pictured him to be this grizzly bear, always serious,” the Elvis actor said before revealing that he was surprised to find that Hardy was “one of the funniest people I’ve ever met”.

“He’d be joking around until action is called and then go into being the most intense guy I’d ever seen,” Butler said.

Adding that he “learnt a lot from Tom”, the Dune star likened Hardy’s skill to Brolin’s – “where you can be in that relaxed place where you’re receptive to your environment, and then when the times comes, you can click into what the scene demands”.

Austin Butler and Tom Hardy (Getty Images)

The Bikeriders is currently without a release date. It was originally scheduled for release in cinemas on 1 December, but it has now been pulled from this year’s slate amid the ongoing actors’ strike.

The film marks Butler’s first project since his Oscar-nominating turn as Rock and Roll legend Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 Elvis biopic.

That is if the movie’s new premiere date manages to be rescheduled before the release of Dune: Part 2, in which Butler will star as Feyd-Rautha, the younger nephew of villainous Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård).

The sci-fi sequel is expected to hit cinemas on 15 March 2024.

Comparing his experience shooting The Bikeriders to the “spectacle of Elvis and Dune”, Butler said: “It was nice to go to something that felt more independent and play in that space for a bit.

“There’s an intimate sensitivity to The Bikeriders,” he added. “It’s the roaring engines and the smell of grease that we got to be around.”

Butler continued: “To get to ride motorcycles through Cincinnati, through these cornfields, it was just amazing. You know what that feels like, where the wind is in your hair. You feel like you’re mainlining god.”