Tom Hardy’s 10 Most Impressive Performances

10) Mad Max: Fury Road

Not that he was exactly an unknown before, but 2015 was the year Tom Hardy really broke out. That was down in large part to Mad Max: Fury Road, starring the actor in his first lead in a blockbuster, and featuring his fresh take on an already well-established character: Max Rockatansky, whom Hardy – like Mel Gibson before him – interprets as a taciturn antihero ready for war.

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but Hardy’s performance as Max proves what a presence this man is: even with a scant few lines of dialogue, he commands the screen. Fury Road isn’t about any one actor standing out above the rest; it’s about entertainment and the director’s overall vision.

That said, Hardy achieves something rare in Fury Road: he creates an icon out of a character that on the page is written as basically personality-free.