“If you look round Hollywood there’s no end of white smiles and six packs. Long lines of beautiful people lining up to be incredible on film. Lots of people who want this part. I have a responsibility to those who didn’t make it to the pitch.” So he’s going to build settlements and obstacle courses in the outback for two months, use them to train, and then dismantle them. “Max is a loner in a desolate landscape,” he explains. “I’ve got to create the body of someone broken who survives from meal to meal. I want the muscles of a manual labourer who builds camps then disbands them.” He doesn’t know what’s going to be inside Max yet, though. He’s waiting to find that out from George Miller, because Max is George’s man. “George will be the font of my wisdom because I’m not playing someone real – it’s not Adolf Hitler or Graham Norton. I can practise being Graham Norton in my bedroom for hours; I’ve got nothing with Mad Max.”

- Tom Hardy on Hollywood and Mad Max in 2010

Mad Max: Fury Road postponed again because of George Miller’s heart surgery?

Local movie industry sources, currently involved in preparations for the filming of Mad Max IV at various locations in the central coastal region, confirmed this week that the producer George Miller had to undergo a cardiac procedure in Australia recently.

Crew members consulted said the producer urgently needed the medical procedure for a defective heart valve, but insisted that Miller has made a good recovery and is expected in Namibia as early as next week. Whether the purpose of Miller’s arrival in Namibia is to start filming or whether it is a routine visit to check that preparations for casting later this year are up to standard remains unclear. (x)

George Miller has confirmed that a mid-2012 shoot is on for Mad Max Fury Road. He then hopes to lens two sequels, resulting in an all-new “Max” trilogy. The movie will start shooting in May or June in Namibia.

Tom’s Max will go up against a hulking thug, played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, and his gang.

*   *   *

Q: Tom Hardy. Brilliant choice as Max. He’s a fantastic actor.

Miller: Yeah, he is quite something. He’s going to be terrific in the role. It’s going to be interesting to see the sort of work he does, yeah.

Full article at Moviehole

Tom Hardy was brilliant casting, and you cast him right after “Bronson” or very close to that I guess. He hadn’t been booked on “The Dark Knight Rises” or anything, so how’d you come to him?

Well, I just saw lots and lots of actors and tested them. Tom was there and he just got that thing, you know? There’s a certain quality of a really charismatic actor that, I don’t know, they remind me of some sort of big, wild cat. They look great and then they walk around or whatever, but you never know when they’re going to strike. You just don’t know what they’re going to do. We tested for a day. Well, it wasn’t like a test. It was just working, improvising and playing around. He was fantastic.

- George Miller

*crying & sobbing for MM4 to finally get started! Please, the anticipation is killing me already!

(Source: comingsoon.net, via charlidos)

George Miller talks Fury Road, Tom Hardy as rebooted Mad Max

With so many failed starts on a new “Mad Max” installment and filming set to start in early 2012, one would imagine that the narrative has changed dramatically. But Miller said that while it’s grown somewhat, it’s essentially much the same film he wanted to shoot in 2003. “Obviously I’ve worked on [the script] since, and we’ve got the whole movie designed – we’ve got 150 big vehicles built – and the world has evolved. I hope I’ve evolved, and I hope the movie’s evolved. But it’s pretty similar; at its core, it’s not that different.”

On Tom Hardy as Mad Max:

One thing that Miller said was absolutely the same was Mad Max, the character who was being rebooted, albeit primarily via Hardy’s performance rather than a ground-up reinvention via screenwriting. “He’s a rebooted Mad Max, but it’s a new interpretation.” Miller revealed. “We made it very clear from the outset that it would be crazy to try to impersonate what Mel had done, but Tom [like] Mel and Heath Ledger; these guys all have very similar kind of maleness, I find. I don’t know, they somehow remind me of big cats – they’re mesmerizing to look and be with, but you don’t know what they’re going to do at any moment.”

On Tom as an actor:

“There’s kind of a lot of stuff boiling underneath, and that makes them extremely interesting to watch,” he observed. “And also, Tom is an astonishingly good actor.”

full story @ The Playlist

(via tomhardyvariations)