Betting against Leonardo DiCaprio used to be a pretty safe move back in the day when the actor simply could not get a win at the Oscars year after year. But Tom Hardy has learned the hard way to never wager with DiCaprio. When Hardy refused to believe the Academy would acknowledge his supporting work in The Revenant, which went on to grab 12 Oscar nominations and win three, DiCaprio insisted he was wrong. Hardy made things interesting by proposing a bet: If he got nominated, he’d have to get a tattoo of DiCaprio’s choosing, and vice versa.
As we all know, Hardy got that supporting actor nomination. The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and DiCaprio both won their categories, while Hardy lost to Mark Rylance. Hardy lost the award, but more importantly, he lost the bet. In an interview with Esquire, he revealed that DiCaprio wrote “Leo knows everything” for his new tattoo “in really shitty handwriting.” “Ha! I was like, ‘OK, I’ll get it done, but you have to write it properly.’”
Hardy has yet to get the tattoo, “because it sucks.” But fair is fair. And hey, stranger things have happened than Tom Hardy tattooing Leonardo DiCaprio’s name on his body—like, for example, a violent and empty film about man vs. bear winning an inordinate number of awards.
Hardy’s new FX series, Taboo, premieres on January 10. We’ll be looking for the tat. It should go well with the others.