Watch: Tom Hardy plays bisexual gangster Ronnie Kray
The Mad Max star is set to play the infamous London gangster Ronnie Kray and his brother Ray in the upcoming movie – and judging from the trailer, the film does not aim to shy away from the criminal’s bisexuality.
Hardy will play the brothers in Legend, an upcoming biopic of the East End’s most infamous criminals during the 1950s and ’60s.
After years of involvement in armed robberies, arson, extortion, assaults and even murder, the twins were finally arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1969.
Ronnie was openly bisexual and famed for parading his younger male lovers in public – a subject briefly covered in the 1990 film The Krays, but expected to take centre stage in Legend, with Hardy telling a rival gangster: “I prefer boys. Italian. Sometimes Greek, but I’m not prejudiced.”
Last year, relatives of the twins expressed anger after hearing that a documentary about the brothers implied that Ronnie’s married brother Reggie Kray was also gay.
Reggie was married to Frances Shea, but old associates interviewed for the 2014 film claimed that the marriage was a sham to cover Reggie’s true sexuality.
Wilf Pine, 70, said: “They were both gay, not just Ronnie, but it was well hidden. Reggie’s marriage was a sham.”
In 2010, Hardy himself revealed that he slept with men when he was younger.
When asked whether he had ever had a gay sexual relationship, the Inception star replied: “As a boy? Of course I have. I’m an actor for ****’s sake.
“I’ve played with everything and everyone. I love the form and the physicality, but now that I’m in my thirties, it doesn’t do it for me.
“I’m done experimenting but there’s plenty of stuff in a relationship with another man, especially gay men, that I need in my life.”
Watch the full trailer below.
