Inside Tom Hardy's Hollywood feud with Charlize Theron that saw her ask for protection on set

Tom Hardy may be one of the biggest names in Hollywood, but that hasn’t stopped him from having a fairly high-profile feud or two.

While he has never said they actually fell out, Shia LaBeouf and him reportedly got into a scrap on the set of Lawless that led to rumours for years that LaBeouf had knocked him out.

This, however, pales in comparison to Hardy’s feud with Charlize Theron on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road.

The star of recent Netflix thriller Havoc reportedly acted in a way that led to Theron asking for private security on set – so, what went on?

Filming in the desert for Mad Max

The pair worked together on Mad Max: Fury Road (Warner Brothers)

It has been widely reported that, though the film ended up being a beloved action classic with 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, the set itself was a pressure cooker.

The film’s torturous set and the tension between the two leads, who played Max and Furiosa in the film, led to a book titled Blood, Sweat and Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road.

Nicholas Hoult, who also appears in the film, said in an interview for the book: “It was a tense atmosphere at times. It was kind of like you’re on your summer holidays and the adults in the front of the car are arguing.”

Theron requesting protection on set

Charlize Theron starred as Furiosa (Warner Brothers)

Speaking in the book, Theron accused Hardy of numerous instances of being unprofessional, one of which was that Hardy would reportedly turn up to set hours late on several occasions, leaving his co-stars waiting.

On one occasion in which he made the star wait three hours, she reportedly called him unprofessional and said the producers should ‘fine the fucking c*nt a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he’s held up this crew’.

Hardy reportedly then charged up to her and was ‘aggressive’, leading Theron to request personal protection while she was on set of the film.

A camera operator working on the set said in the book that she immediately went ‘I want someone as protection’ and that she appeared to feel ‘threatened’ by him.

What has Charlize Theron said?

Neither Theron nor Hardy have been shy in admitting their personal failures in making the set a good place to work on.

Theron said of Hoult’s comment that it was like parents fighting in the car: “He’s right, it was like two parents in the front of the car. We were either fighting or we were icing each other—I don’t know which one is worse—and they had to deal with it in the back.

The actors did not get on while on set (Warner Brothers)

“It was horrible! We should not have done that; we should have been better. I can own up to that.”

She also said: “I don’t want to make excuses for bad behavior, but it was a tough shoot.

“Now, I have a very clear perspective on what went down. I don’t think I had that clarity when we were making the movie. I was in survival mode; I was really scared shitless.”

What has Tom Hardy said?

Hardy meanwhile has said since the shoot that he was ‘in over his head’, and that the pressure on both stars was ‘overwhelming at times’.

He went on to add: “What she needed was a better, perhaps more experienced partner in me. That's something that can't be faked. I'd like to think that now that I'm older and uglier, I could rise to that occasion.”

Hardy does however deny that Theron was ever ‘scared’ of him, saying to GQ: “Charlize is an intense woman. Very intense, actually. In a good way… She’s a very serious actor. So I don’t see why she would ever be intimidated by me or in any way feel frightened. I think that was more… [expletive].”