Tom Hardy has called for the right to privacy while living in the public eye as he defended his angry reaction to being asked about his sexuality.
The Legend actor bristled when a reporter from the LGBT site Daily Xtra suggested his sexuality was “ambiguous” because of comments he reportedly made to Attitude magazine in 2008.
When the journalist asked if celebrities found it hard to talk to the media about their sexuality, an incredulous Hardy said he didn't, and then cut him off.
He blamed this blunt reaction on the reporter invading his privacy by asking such a probing and "inelegant" question from a public platform, telling the Daily Beast: “I’m under no obligation to share anything to do with my family, my children, my sexuality - that’s nobody’s business but my own. And I don’t see how that can have anything to do with what I do as an actor, and it’s my own business.
“If you knew me as a friend, then sure, we’d talk about anything. But that was a public forum, and for someone to inelegantly ask a question that seemed designed entirely to provoke a reaction, and start a topic of debate… It’s important destigmatising sexuality and gender inequality in the workplace, but to put a man on the spot in a room full of people designed purely for a salacious reaction?”
Daily Xtra defended its decision to ask Hardy about his sexuality in an editorial arguing it has a responsibility to address sexuality both on screen and in real life, and said other actors welcomed questions around this issue.
Read more: LGBT website defends asking actor about his sexuality
But Hardy said such a provocative question would have elicited a much stronger reaction if he had asked it one on one, insisting that his response had been restrained.
“To be quite frank, it’s rude. If he’d have said that to me in the street, I’d have said the same thing back: “I’m sorry, who the fuck are you?
"And I appreciate that I could probably have more grace as a human being, but I’m just a bloke. I’m just a man. And I’m just a man doing a job."
