You might know Tom Hardy as the tough guy in The Revenant and Venom, but does he have a soft spot in his heart for animals?
No, Tom Hardy isn’t vegan, but the British actor and producer does follow a mostly vegetarian diet. Hardy is a huge animal lover (especially dogs) and his respect for all creatures plays a role in his daily food choices.
Tom Hardy’s diet has changed a lot over the years, especially due to the requirements of different roles. Regardless of which role he’s preparing for, chances are, he’s eating a healthy and mostly plant-based diet.
Tom Hardy is a well-known dog lover, and his love for animals has extended to how he plans his diet—even when that means the use of innovative props in his movies.
But What About That Lobster?
If you’ve seen the 2018 superhero film, Venom, you’ll probably remember the infamous scene in which Hardy’s character Eddie Brock (Venom) jumps into a lobster tank at a restaurant. Nearing the end of the scene, Eddie rips into a live lobster from the tank, and what appears to be guts spills across his face.
According to an interview with USA Today, this seemingly disgusting act was actually a pretty delicious one. The real lobsters in the tank were replaced with fake ones and the one that Hardy’s character bit into was actually a candy lobster. What looks like guts for viewers was actually a sweet and tasty combination of chocolate syrup and marshmallow filling.
A Love for Animals
If you know anything about Tom Hardy, you probably know how much of a softie he is for animals. It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to know that there’s an entire Instagram page (with more than 108K followers!) dedicated to pictures of him holding dogs.
Tom was the proud owner of a dog that was nearly as famous as him. Woody was the 11-week-old pup that Hardy adopted after he was found running loose in Georgia in 2011. Just six short years later, Woody passed away after a battle with polymyositis. According to TIME magazine, Woody was listed as one of the top 100 most influential animals—but for Hardy, his legacy is much greater than that.
Tom’s Tumblr includes a beautiful tribute to his late best friend. It’s a tearjerker, so don’t read without having tissues available.
His love for dogs extends beyond those he gets to spend his time with. In 2019, Hardy joined other celebs like Casey Affleck to create a PETA video designed to help neglected ‘backyard dogs.’
Hardy’s Flexible Diet
Maybe it’s his love of dogs, or maybe it’s for a variety of other reasons, but Tom Hardy doesn’t see the point in killing and eating a sentient being. That said, however, Hardy has been required to adjust his diet to fulfil the needs of specific roles.
Over the years, he has definitely eaten much more meat than he does today. When he was preparing for the film Warrior, he did away with most carbs in his diet and was eating between 5-6 protein-heavy meals throughout the day. This included a lot of chicken and broccoli—with basically nothing else.
When he was preparing for the film Bronson, eating became very fun. He needed to gain weight and was able to chow down on pizza and chocolate. It was similar when he was preparing for Batman, as Hardy needed to gain 30 lbs. in 3 months by drinking a lot of milk and shakes.
According to that same USA Today interview in which Hardy let fans know about that tasty chocolate lobster film secret, he also let us all into another secret—when it comes to his new vegetarian diet, he’s imperfect. Like many of us, Hardy experiences “lazy moments,” and the subsequent guilt that follows.
Hardy isn’t vegan, but he is doing a lot in his personal and professional life to advocate for animals. If he’s able to avoid eating animals on the set and when preparing for the different requirements of different roles, maybe all of us can do a little better, too.