Hardy never takes the easy route.
It is almost starting to seem that James Bond isn’t messed up enough for him. The Brit hard man is about to appear as the lead in a Marvel superhero movie, but will be playing Eddie Brock in Venom, who is taken over by an evil alien symbiote.
In the past he hasn’t just played gangsters, he played the most tormented of souls from the Kray twins to Charles Bronson.
He will complete his hat trick of gangster biopics by tackling the most legendary one of all – but by examining the tragic and terrible fall of Al Capone, not his heady days as Chicago’s king pin.
It is a story of imprisonment, humiliation, mental decline and chronic syphilis.
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True to form, Hardy announced the news with a single black and white image on his Instagram page and an enigmatic tagline.
With his face wreathed in cigar smoke, Hardy’s post simply says: “Time for Al Cap.”
The actor has long harboured hopes of playing the crime lord and is about to start shooting the Josh Trank project, Fonzo, at last. The project was previously reported in Deadline as: “Fonzo, a new project written and to be directed by Josh Trank… which centres on Capone in the final days of his life.”
And they were truly terrible and pitiful final days, indeed.
Al Capone may be one of the most terrifying figures in modern history, but his fall was swift and absolute.
When he arrived at Atlanta U.S. Penitentiary in May 1932, aged 33, he was officially diagnosed with syphilis and gonorrhoea, as well as suffering from withdrawal symptoms from cocaine addiction, which had perforated his septum.
Seen as weak, he was heavily bullied and threatened and needed protection. Capone was also stabbed in prison in 1936. Over the years in prison his neurosyphilis eroded his mental faculties and he became confused and disoriented. Thing would only get worse from there.
When he was released in 1939 the syphilis had caused partial paralysis and dementia. Examined by his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist in 1946, he was found to have the mentality capacity of a 12-year-old child.
A recluse at his mansion in Palm Island, Florida, Capone had a stroke on January 21 1947 and then contracted pneumonia. Cardiac arrest the following day precipitated his death on January 25, aged 48.
This truly could be the greatest role of Hardy’s career.