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"  If you have trouble placing Tom Hardy&amp;#039;s face (hint: He was the impossibly slick con artist in Inception), that&amp;#039;s probably because he&amp;#039;s so good at disguising himself. For his breakout role, in 2008&amp;#039;s Bronson, the biopic about one of Britain&amp;#039;s most notorious criminals, Hardy packed on 40 pounds of muscle and turned himself into a lunatic he-man. In this summer&amp;#039;s The Dark Knight Rises, the closing chapter of Christopher Nolan&amp;#039;s Batman trilogy, he plays the villainous Bane\u2014with his handsome face obscured by a hulking gas mask. Thankfully, Hardy&amp;#039;s easier to spot this month in Lawless as a Prohibition-era bootlegger trying to slip Jessica Chastain out of her corset and lace. If Hardy, 34, is sometimes scarily intense on-screen, he comes by that grit honestly: As a London teen he was arrested for joyriding in a stolen car, and he later battled serious addiction as his first marriage imploded. But Hardy&amp;#039;s now been clean for almost a decade, and sobriety suits him well. In fact, he was practically giddy when he called ELLE\u2014with his fianc\u00E9e, British actress Charlotte Riley, within earshot\u2014 to reveal what makes him cry and why the woman he already calls his &amp;quot;missus&amp;quot; won&amp;#039;t set a wedding date. ELLE: Critics have noted the cool confidence you have on-screen. Were you born confident? Tom Hardy: If I have any confidence, it&amp;#039;s driven by absolute fear. ELLE: Did you get into acting to meet women? TH: I went to drama school because it was the only thing I could get further education in. It was also a way of delaying leaving home and growing up. ELLE: Who was the first woman to pay any attention to you? TH: My mother. I don&amp;#039;t have any brothers or sisters, so as a young boy my world was very much my mother. ELLE: You&amp;#039;re a softy! What did she teach you about women? TH: It wasn&amp;#039;t just one thing. She&amp;#039;s a strong woman. But then you meet other strong women, and you realize they&amp;#039;re not all the same. You have to start learning new rules very quickly. ELLE: Has a woman ever underestimated you? TH: Women are so clever, I wouldn&amp;#039;t know it if one had. ELLE: Have you ever thrown a punch to protect a woman&amp;#039;s honor? TH: Charlotte, my fianc\u00E9e, is here with me. She says, &amp;quot;I have to stop him from standing up for a woman&amp;#039;s honor all the bloody time.&amp;quot; [Laughs] That&amp;#039;s what my missus says. ELLE: Your &amp;quot;missus&amp;quot;\u2014 that&amp;#039;s sweet. I read somewhere that you call her Charlie Monkey. Does she have a nickname for you? TH: Yeah\u2014Boo. B-double-o. ELLE: Boo? That&amp;#039;s a rap thing, no? TH: It is? She&amp;#039;s always called me that. I don&amp;#039;t know why. Charlotte&amp;#039;s from [the English town of] Middlesbrough. Not a lot of rappers coming out of Middlesbrough. ELLE: You&amp;#039;re naturally kind of slight. Does she treat you differently when you bulk up for a movie? TH: She says I take up more of the bed. And I&amp;#039;m harder to turn over when I&amp;#039;m snoring. ELLE: Are you vain? TH: Absolutely. I&amp;#039;m hugely narcissistic, but I dress like a homeless person. ELLE: Has your narcissism ever been a problem? TH: Vanity is normal in performers. Does it bother other people? All the time. But nine times out of 10, that says more about them than you. ELLE: You&amp;#039;re legitimately frightening as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Is it hard to leave characters like that back at the office, so to speak? TH: Some characters are nicer to have at home than others, Charlotte says. It&amp;#039;s hard to shake it all out. There&amp;#039;s a decompression period back to civilian and family life. I&amp;#039;ve only just realized that, actually. We&amp;#039;ve had six months with nothing to do but prep for the next project and be at home and be a family, and I realized how deeply affected I can be by a character, and how much work it takes to just be at home and be present.  ELLE: One of my first crushes was Eartha Kitt as Catwoman. Do you have a favorite Catwoman? TH: You can&amp;#039;t tempt me to answer a question about Catwoman with my missus in the car. And for political reasons, I have to say Anne Hathaway. [Laughs] ELLE: Your father is a comedy writer. Did he teach you anything about women? TH: Everything, probably. Because we become our fathers. ELLE: How so? TH: I hate to be pat, but that&amp;#039;s such a can of worms.... ELLE: Fair enough. You got engaged in 2010 but haven&amp;#039;t set a date yet. You recently blamed your fianc\u00E9e, calling her &amp;quot;a difficult woman to pin down.&amp;quot; Is that true? TH: [To Charlotte] Are you difficult to pin down? Now she&amp;#039;s just laughing, mate! ELLE: That&amp;#039;s not a good sign. TH: I can wait for her as long as it takes. ELLE: You two starred together in a PBS adaptation of Wuthering Heights. The story is about a &amp;quot;love that destroyed everyone it touched.&amp;quot; Is that the best kind of love? TH: Not in my experience. Somebody very smart once told me, &amp;quot;Love is doing something you don&amp;#039;t want to do for someone you don&amp;#039;t particularly like at that moment.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s grown-up love. ELLE: When was the last time a woman made you cry? TH: No one&amp;#039;s ever made me cry. I&amp;#039;ve reacted. I&amp;#039;ve cried at the mercy of women and at the mercy of men. And at the mercy of that movie with Richard Dreyfuss\u2014the one where he plays a high school music teacher. ELLE: You mean Mr. Holland&amp;#039;s Opus? TH: Yeah. I remember getting caught up in the sentimentality of it. I wept for Mr. Holland. ELLE: If I got all the women you&amp;#039;ve ever dated on the phone and asked them to agree on one statement about you, what would they say? TH: If you did that, I would so never speak to you again. ELLE: It&amp;#039;s a hypothetical question. TH: I think they&amp;#039;d be grateful I&amp;#039;m gone. ELLE: I doubt that. TH: They&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;Poor, poor Charlotte.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s what they&amp;#039;d all say. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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