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8 Great Double Performances From A Single Actor

It's quite difficult for an actor to convincingly play one movie character, with all their faults, tics and foibles. Even the greatest actors in the world don't always get the complexities of a performance right, even with all their attention focused on the part. Imagine the difficulty, then, of one actor facing down the challenge of playing not one character, but two, in the exact same goddamn movie.

1) Tom Hardy In Legend

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Legend-1

He’s the best leading man Hollywood has today – of course Tom Hardy nailed the dual role for Legend. In Brian Helgeland’s film, Hardy is both Reggie and Ronnie Kray, the celebrity East End gangsters who ruled London in the 50s and 60s. Basic character summary: one’s a blatant psycho, the other’s a psycho that just happens to be able to keep the fact hidden most of the time.

Legend wouldn’t work without Hardy, and what makes his performance so special is how he renders the brothers both individually unique and together similar enough to be kin.

Reggie’s the suave, sophisticated one, while Ronnie’s his cold, volatile other half; both are fundamentally bad men struggling with their own compulsive lust for violence. Reports suggest the real Krays were never actually this conflicted, but it makes for one (two) hell of a performance(s).