Leonardo DiCaprio Is The Man To Thank For One Of Tom Hardy's Best Roles

23 years into his film career, Tom Hardy is still impossible to pin down. Is he a leading man? A full-on movie star? A character actor? Would he be perfectly happy to just make Venom movies until he retires?

Here's what we do know about Hardy: he's handsome, he loves trying on weird accents (which we ranked here at /Film), and he commits fully to every role whether it's a prestige picture or a superhero flick. Critics dig him (even if they do not dig the "Venom" movies at all), and he's tremendously respected by his fellow actors. He's one of the best we've got. But it's been 16 years since his breakthrough bravura performance in Nicolas Winding Refn's "Bronson," and, for whatever reason, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' membership has only managed to nominate him for one measly Oscar.

What gives?

While he's been magnificent in very good to great films like "Lawless," "Locke," "The Drop," and "Dunkirk," these films either didn't get energetic awards pushes or Hardy sunk so deeply into them that voters took his work for granted. Does he have an Oscar clip in "Dunkirk?" Not really. Is his portrayal of an aviator in a plane that sounds like it's about to shake apart integral to keeping me on edge throughout Christopher Nolan's masterpiece? Unquestionably.

In any event, you get the sense that his fellow actors are rooting for him to find that Oscar-worthy part. One person who's very much in his corner is Leonardo DiCaprio, who, after working with Hardy on Nolan's "Inception," personally asked him to consider the part of ruthless trapper John Fitzgerald in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's "The Revenant."

In a 2015 interview with Variety, Hardy revealed that DiCaprio almost single-handedly got him cast in Iñárritu's gnarly wilderness epic. According to Hardy:

"[DiCaprio] called me up and said, 'Dude, I know you're about to do something where you're jumping out of helicopters and shooting guns and s***. But before you do that, I need you to take a look at this script. It's f***ing awesome.' That's how it started — 'It's going to be f***ing awesome.' Then I had a meeting with Alejandro, talking through the character. I ended up getting the job."

How good is Hardy in "The Revenant?" I saw the film at a long-lead screening before awards season was in full swing, and I had no idea he was Fitzgerald until the closing credits hit. I wouldn't say he's as chamelon-like as Gary Oldman was in the 1980s and '90s, but screen "The Revenant" next to "The Drop" and you're looking at two completely different people. He's capable of startling transformations, but they never feel like stunts.

It feels like only a matter of time before Hardy wins an Oscar, but if he goes the route of Oldman (who didn't get his first Academy Award nomination until 26 years after blowing moviegoers away in Alex Cox's "Sid and Nancy"), that trophy could be a long way off. So, if it's important for Hardy to stay on the Academy's radar (and, again, it's entirely unclear as to what this marvelously talented man truly wants), he could do worse than seek DiCaprio's awards-chasing counsel (who racked up four nominations between 1994 and 2014 before finally winning Best Actor for "The Revenant" in 2016).