The surprising inspiration behind Tom Hardy’s “Bikeriders” voice

The voice of Johnny, the character from Tom Hardy’s “The Bikeriders,” sounds somehow familiar to me. And it is also undoubtedly strange for the massive leader of a motorcycle gang.

The performance is a little nasal, sometimes high-pitched and even, perhaps unintentionally, downright funny. A bit like… Bugs Bunny?

“Here you go!” booms Hardy, leaning towards the camera on his smartphone and smiling as if he were announcing “Jackpot!”

“Yes, Bugs Bunny, 100%,” he says. “Why? Well, there’s something playful about it. I like to mix Taxi Driver and Disneyland to balance out my character.”

Join our watch party! Sign up to get USA TODAY’s movie and TV recommendations delivered straight to your inbox

Essentially, Hardy uses Johnny’s voice to give viewers a false sense of security.

His manner is marked by a gentleness that is completely at odds with the crime boss, always ready to fight with his motorcycle club, the Vandals, a stand-in for the real Chicago Outlaws Club that was the subject of the 1968 book “The Bikeriders” by photographer and reporter Danny Lyon.

“I like counterweights,” says Hardy, who became known for his role as a comic book antihero in “Venom” (2018) and his starring role in “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015).

“That is, when you’re presented with a character like Johnny, this guy with, in quotes, masculine biker sexuality, I want to look for qualities that are a complete counterpoint to that, what’s not cool, what’s not sexy,” Hardy says of his odd voice choice. “I look for the contradictory elements that exist in the human condition.”

But Hardy also plays with the inherent power of a character who seems mysteriously menacing, a bit like Marlon Brando’s terrifyingly soft-spoken mafia boss in 1972’s The Godfather.

“Anyone who wants to gain power in a room won’t shout, just as people who speak loudly in a bar fight are about to get knocked down,” Hardy says. “A big man who is quiet makes you lean forward.”

Marlon Brando’s “Wild One” is a touchstone for Tom Hardy in “The Bikeriders”

In Bikeriders, which also stars Austin Butler and Jodie Comer, Hardy’s Johnny seeks a sense of community among his working-class friends and decides to form a motorcycle club. As a founder, he’s looking for a way to exude leadership qualities.

One day, Johnny finds out just that when he sees a movie on TV. It is the now classic film “The Wild One” from 1953, in which the young Brando plays the leader of a motorcycle gang that threatens a small western town.

In Bikeriders, we see Hardy’s Johnny watching Brando – whose character is also named Johnny – deliver his most famous line from the film. When a woman in the gang asks Johnny what he’s rebelling against, Brando replies with a serious expression, “What’s wrong with you?” As he does so, Hardy’s Johnny mimics the line.

Hardy, who loves to wax philosophical about the art of acting when prompted, delves into the deconstruction of his own work.

“Johnny is the oldest of his gang, the leader of the pack, and yet he has to watch a Marlon Brando movie to learn how to sound cool,” he says. “Johnny is heroic but pathetic, pathetic but brave, funny but makes terrible decisions. So his voice, yes, was designed to sound a little bit scary. It manipulates that sense of power.”

Silence is a tool of the greatest actors, says Tom Hardy

Although Hardy says that he was not trying to borrow anything from Brando when making “Bikeriders,” he clearly admires the legendary actor, who died in 2004 at the age of 80.

“Marlon was a genius, a man who hit the right note at the right time and helped to get this kind of method acting going,” says Hardy, referring to a style that requires actors to fully immerse themselves in their roles. “If there’s anything (Brando) left in my Johnny, it’s only a residue.”

What impresses Hardy most about Brando’s magic is not so much his delivery but his reaction shots. When Brando’s characters are asked to speak, he usually holds back, Hardy says.

“Watch him when the camera pans to him. Often he’ll act helpless, look away, create a tense moment and only then come back to his lines,” he says. “One of Marlon’s best tools was silence.”

However, Hardy is not a big fan of “The Wild One,” one of the icon’s first mainstream hits after he burst onto the screen in 1951’s “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

“I watched a bit of it and honestly I found it unbearable,” he says. “It just seemed dated, almost like a parody, which is what you would expect. But for its time it was outstanding. It was rocket science back then,” laughs Hardy. “But yeah, if I had taken that film as a model and put on a performance where my Johnny says, ‘Hey, bada boom, bada bing, bada bang,’ the director would have just said, ‘Please stop that.'”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Bikeriders’ star Tom Hardy analyzes his Brando scene