Is Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood (2008)

Hardy – the 31-year-old actor who has so far racked up appearances in Black Hawk Down, Marie Antoinette and Layer Cake – has just completed the knockout role of his ever-blossoming career.

He’s Bronson, Charles Bronson, in the appropriately named Bronson – a tale of one of the uk’s most notorious prisoners. It’s one hell of a performance, as fully absorbed as Daniel Day-Lewis, say.

Photography by Chris Floyd