“I’m going to fail to hit the mark I’ve put up before me because it’s not possible to hit it. I want to be the best at what I do so I’ve got to get over myself already because that’s never going to happen. I ain’t ever going to be God.”

I’m from a nice, suburban, middle-class family, but my tattoos remind me where I’ve been.

I think it’s important that you always transform if you can. That’s what I was trained to do. You try and hide yourself as much as you can – that’s the key to longevity.

There’s an abundance of exposure when you start working in American films. Inevitably you become a brand and that has to be controlled.

Love is doing something you don’t want to do for someone you don’t particularly like at that moment.

I had a huge imagination. My granddad says I was a bit of a Walter Mitty character.

I guess if I had fifty million dollars I could spend more time at home.

I like to be other people, not me. And when you’re on the red carpet, it’s like, ‘Here’s Tom Hardy.’ I don’t want to be me. That’s why I play other people.

I’m just getting settled as a responsible man – but if you split the elephant into little mouthfuls it will be fine.

I set myself that decision, otherwise I’m driving an opinion at you, and I think that would be treating you like you’re an idiot. I don’t want to force-feed you my opinion.

I’m into parlor dramas. I’m into theatre. I’m trained for the stage. I trained to do Chekhov and Shakespeare, I was trained for the stage.

If I am duly compared to Marlon Brando at all, well, I can only think of The Teahouse of the ‘Shanghai Noon,’ that they’re comparing me to that!

The only thing I can do is wipe my arse, brush my teeth, turn up and do the best work I can.

Whatever character you play, remember they are always doing something they are not just talking.

I have a very busy head. I have inside voices that I have learned to contain.

You don’t step on stage to eat; you go there to be eaten.

The Long Red Road is a story about alcoholism and dysfunction and tragic tale of a man who’s trying to drink himself to death on an Indian reservation in Dakota. It was written for me, so it’s something I would love to do.

My interest in this pack of failures betrays my character.

Do not let arrogance go to your head and despair to your heart; do not let compliments go to your head and criticisms to your heart; do not let success go to your head and failure to your heart.

Failure is a bend in the road, not the end of the road. Learn from failure and keep moving forward.

On this “way,” if to keep falling down and getting up can be called a way.

And did I pass?” The face of the old woman on my right was unreadable in the gathering dusk. On my left, the younger woman said, “You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.

A life without thinking is quite possible; it then fails to develop its own essence – it is not merely meaningless; it is not fully alive. Unthinking men are like sleepwalkers

Nothing is more tragic than failure to discover one’s true business in life, or to find that one has drifted or been forced by circumstance into an uncongenial calling.

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.