A new survey has named Tom Hardy as the most difficult actor for Americans to understand, forcing many to switch on subtitles.
The survey by language app Preply, via The Wrap, also named gangster drama Peaky Blinders as the show Americans found the hardest to understand. The gritty Birmingham-set series stars Hardy as Alfie Solomons.
In his acting career, Hardy has taken on many accents that range from cockney (The Kray twins in crime drama Legend), Southern American (Lawless), Russian (Child 44), and New Yorker (Venom).
Perhaps we could pass some of the blame on to director Christopher Nolan, who cast Hardy in two of his most prominent roles to date, both of which included a mask that muzzled the actor’s dialogue. Those roles include villainous Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, and an aircraft fighter pilot in World War II drama, Dunkirk.
It’s not the first time that Hardy has come under scrutiny for his diction. In 2018, US publication Dallas Observer ranked his movies ‘by how hard it is to understand what he’s saying’.
Other people named as difficult to understand include Sofia Vergara, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sean Connery, Johnny Depp, Jackie Chan and Benedict Cumberbatch.
The survey interviewed 1200 people and aimed to discover how American film and TV viewers used subtitled services. It found that half of Americans use subtitles most of the time.
57 percent of Americans have used subtitles to better understand actors with an accent, with Scottish and Irish listed as the hardest to keep up with.
Gen-Z audiences reported using subtitles most of the time, with results showing the younger age groups used subtitles more often than elderly audiences.
18 percent of viewers said they use subtitles to help them learn a new language.