Tom Hardy plays the Role of Kray Twins in the movie 'Legend'
Edward Thomas "Tom" Hardy, 38, is an English actor, screenwriter, and producer, plays the role of Kray twins in the movie, 'Legend'. Suave, charming and volatile, Reggie Kray and his unstable twin brother Ronnie Kray, start to leave their mark on the London underworld in the 1960s. Using violence to get what they want, the siblings orchestrate robberies and murders while running nightclubs and protection rackets. With police Detective Leonard "Nipper" Read hot on their heels, the brothers continue their rapid rise to power and achieve tabloid notoriety.
'Legend' is first and foremost a launching pad for a wild dual-character performance by Tom Hardy as both Reg and Ron. 'Legend' is directed by Brian Helgeland, who also adapted the screenplay from John Pearson's book "The Profession of Violence," and the movie attempts to tell the story of the Krays from the vantage point of Frances Shea, a local girl who would marry Ron. This creates overlapping intersections of loyalty and affection between the brothers, their business and Frances. Helgeland, who wrote and directed the Jackie Robinson biopic '42' and a co-Oscar winner for the screenplay to 'L.A. Confidential,' here never fully connects the personal side of the Krays to their criminal myth.
"I was a little leery of it at first," Mr. Helgeland said in September during an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival. "There's a tradition of casting one actor to play twins in movies, but usually in those movies, I just can't get into it. I keep looking at it and not thinking about the movie."
But Mr. Helgeland was persuaded by the fact that the Krays' physical characteristics and mannerisms were different enough to tell them apart. Hardy's approach to each brother is so distinct that it feels like two actors playing the roles.
As identical twins, he genuinely seems like two different people, so completely does Hardy transform himself in creating a distinct physicality for each brother. There is a mad, creative energy to his performance that is sorely lacking everywhere else in the movie.
Reg is dashing and the more fully functioning of the two, adding a touch of movie-star charm as he climbs to Frances' window with flowers and sweets. Ron, who would be diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic, is more lumbering and volatile, though given to moments of uneasy lightness as when he dances clumsily at a Christmas party that ends violently.
