Is Tom Hardy’s Bane Performance Really Based On Christopher Nolan? ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Director Responds

During a discussion on whether he consciously writes “Nolan-esque” characters like Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb in Inception or Robert Pattinson’s Neil in Tenet, Christopher Nolan waded into the claims that Tom Hardy based his version of Bane on The Dark Knight Rises director. While Nolan denies that he intentionally tries to infuse himself into his characters, he is aware that it can happen without him even knowing it. Especially when actors like Hardy get involved. Here’s what Nolan told the Happy Sad Confused podcast after admitting that he’s been “teased” about the Bane connection in the past. Via Comic Book:

I think there is a slightly mischievous tendency on the part of actors to see in the filmmakers where as a writer, particularly writer/directors, were able to put a bit of themselves into something and then build on that. Tom Hardy maintains that Bane is somehow based on me, but in Tom’s mind there’s some very complex interweaving of impulses and influences that somehow I have a voice in. I think it’s certainly not conscious on my part.

Setting aside whether or not The Dark Knight Rises version of Bane is a send-up of Nolan’s real life personality, the director did reveal the secret to Hardy’s iconic performance: it’s all in the eyebrow. According to Nolan, while working out the costume design for Bane’s mask, Hardy had one simple request: “He sort of put his finger up to his temple and his eyebrow and said ‘Can you give me this to play with Let people see this,'” the director recalled. “Sure enough you see there in the film, this kind of Brando-esque brow, expressing all kinds of just monstrous things.”