Fight is right for brothers in arms

Article by Jenny Cooney Carrillo, The Sydney Morning Herlald

A gruelling workout schedule helped Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy get physical for Warrior.

ALTHOUGH Aussie actor Joel Edgerton has a close relationship with his older brother - stuntman, writer and director Nash Edgerton - it wasn't difficult to step into the role of a former wrestler on a collision course with his estranged brother in the drama Warrior.

''From the ages of about 13 to 16, we looked like this movie in our house,'' the 37-year-old actor says laughing, as he relaxes in a Beverly Hills hotel suite before heading back to Australia to star in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. ''We fought a lot and it was brutal but I often laugh about the fact that we're told as actors at drama school that we would probably be better actors if we'd lived a life of torment and I was blessed to have a great relationship with Nash and my family … I used to think, 'Well, maybe I'm destined to never be any good, then.'''

Edgerton stars as Brendan, a former-fighter-turned-teacher who returns to the mixed martial arts (MMA) ring in a desperate bid to save his family from financial ruin. English actor Tom Hardy - who played Heathcliff in the 2009 Wuthering Heights and a corporate espionage specialist in the Chris Nolan thriller Inception - plays his brother, a former wrestling prodigy who returns home after 14 years (including time as a Marine serving in Iraq) and asks their estranged father (Nick Nolte) to train him for a significant MMA championship fight. This leads him to confront the brother he disowned both in and out of the ring.

With a black belt in karate and an athletic background, Edgerton threw himself into the physical role, doing almost all of the fight work seen on screen under the tutelage of MMA champion Greg Jackson. He gained about nine kilograms of muscle and he and Hardy were put through a gruelling 10-week training and diet regimen before filming. ''There was no real competition between Tom and I because we were both two scared guys turning up to a gym filled with real fighters hoping that we would somehow be able to fit in and not get hurt,'' Edgerton says with a grin. ''I assumed the guys surrounding us would be tough, brutish caveman types but they were so sensitive about how to look after your body and what to eat and how to not get injured. We were really nurtured.''

The shy and soft-spoken Hardy admits he had his doubts. ''I don't fight and I'm not an athlete so when the producers first saw me in the Krav Maga class, there wasn't a lot of hope of me actually making the weight to play Tommy,'' he says. ''But … for two months I trained with Joel, who had his black belt in karate, while mine was in sitting on the sofa, and I was finally able to put on the weight!''

Edgerton says he remembers when it all fell into place. ''Slowly we saw ourselves getting bigger and stronger and then I found myself fighting some of the real wrestlers in choreographed scenes and realising that as much as I was scared about being hurt by them, I was scared of hurting them because I could break a bone and ruin their career, which I never would have imagined before the movie started.''

The positive reviews Edgerton has garnered for this film have earned him the kind of hype that secures his place in Hollywood, boosted by his role in The Great Gatsby and roles in other films he has already shot: the just-released horror movie The Thing and fantasy film The Odd Life of Timothy Green, with Jennifer Garner.

But don't expect the laid-back theatre veteran to get too carried away with his new star status; he already brushed up against it when he co-starred in the British comedy Kinky Boots in 2006. ''There was a whole swell that something was happening for me back then, too,'' he says with a shrug. ''But it's kind of good it never happened back then because it was a humbling experience and taught me the realities of what it is to be in this business.

''Now I'm up for the challenges that maybe I wasn't up for before.''