Hardy On Finding Shinzon's Soul

Tom Hardy, the man behind 'Star Trek Nemesis' adversary Shinzon said today that his character isn't all bad.

"As an actor, I found a human soul within the character and that made him a very interesting villain," Hardy told TrekWeb. "Nobody is all bad. Babies are not born evil, I don’t believe. I think we attain baggage and issues with the world and Shinzon is very much the orphan, the lonely child who was the abused child.

"When it comes to villains, you know, why is this person a monster, why is he all of a sudden so vile? Because of the various things that have been done to him. It's not just 'Haha, I'm bad!'"

He went on to talk about the make-up involved in turning him into a Picard clone for the feature. "Michael Westmore took apart my head and tried to sort of fit it into Patrick's mold," he explained. "We molded the nose… several thousand noses, I think, before we got to the right nose. Then, because my lips are slightly larger we added a scar to take down the size of my lips. We had all this ready to go in latex but we had gelatin as well and under the lights my nose would sort of grow - and then sag."

But there are some parts of the character that didn't make it into the final cut of the movie. "The actor always goes 'how could you cut anything of mine?!' There are scenes cut but I think that if you didn't, the fluidity of the movie would be [compromised]," Hardy said. "There was a scene where I'm introduced speaking to the Romulan Senate which has been cut so they could go right to the stairs for a bit of a better impact. With anything you have to carve some sort of story."

Another scene that fell pray to the editor's scissors has been glimpsed in early trailers for the movie, and featured a telepathic incident between Shinzon and Deanna Troi. "It's the one from the original teaser trailer where I say 'Don't fear,'" Hardy said. "I would've liked to have seen that because it was my first day's work and it was terrifying and I think we got something out of it that was good. But then again, it happens twice, it wasn't right."

Much more from Tom Hardy, including his first day on set and reflection on other Trek villains can be foudn at this page at TrekWeb.

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