Charles Bronson Gave Tom Hardy Some Bizarre Relationship Advice After Actor Split With Girlfriend

As one of the highest profile and - lets face it - handsome men in Hollywood, you wouldn't think that Tom Hardy would need much relationship advice, not least from Britain's most violent prisoner.

However, back in the Noughties that's exactly what the Bronson star received after talking to the notorious Charles Bronson on the phone while the biographical film was being made.

Back when the Nicolas Winding Refn film was in production, Hardy would have regular telephone conversations with the man he was portraying in order to get a sense of his character.

As the actor tells it in an interview clip from 2008 he would be barraged by a slew of calls and messages from Bronson before one day, having not long split up from a relationship, he thought he might as well pick up.

When Bronson asked him how was he was, Hardy said he didn't hold back.

He recalled: "I said 'I'm just not comfortable, I'm saying goodbye to someone that I really loved. I'm not happy I'm not in a good space. I can't be with a woman and yet I can't be without one'.

"It was like Therapy 101 with Charlie Bronson."

As the Hollywood A-lister laid his soul bare to the convict, though, he got some surprising, pretty poetic and some admittedly downright disturbing advice.

You can watch the interview clip below (it contains some strong language):

"Do you remember the floods?" Bronson apparently began.

"Do you remember that boy who got his foot stuck in the grate, and the river kept rising, and it kept rising, and it kept rising, and eventually they tried to get him out but he drowned?"

Bronson continued: "Well that wouldn't have happened to me. Do you want to know why? Because I'd have said, cut it off now.

"Tom, what I'm trying to say is, right, what I'm trying to say, son, is sometimes yeah you've got to cut a little piece of yourself off, yeah, no matter how much it hurts, in order to grow, yeah. In order to move on. Do you know what I mean?"

Then, without skipping a beat, he asked: "What you having for your tea?"

We're not sure whether Hardy took that advice into his subsequent relationships, but he does seem to have eventually found love, having been with Charlotte Riley since meeting her on the set of ITV's adaptation of Wuthering Heights in 2009.

The couple got married in 2014 and now have two children together. Can Hardy give Bronson credit for any of this? We're not so sure.

He can probably give him a little for his subsequent film career though, with the biopic pushing the profile of the London-born actor to greater heights, leading him to roles in the likes of The Dark Knight Rises, Peaky Blinders and the Venom series.