Fan hate took a toll on Tom Hardy for Star Trek: Nemesis

Star Trek: Nemesis was the final film before Star Trek was rebooted in 2009.

In December 2002, Star Trek: Nemesis released to a dismal box office reception. The film earned $67.3 million against a budget of $60 million which effectively closed the doors on a continuing movie starring the crew from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Producer Rick Berman, when talking to KillerMovies.com, thought that the competition of other films might have played a part in the sales as well as the amount of time between Insurrection and Nemesis.

While there were obviously many reasons for the movie’s failure, many fans chose to blame Tom Hardy for his role as Praetor Shinzon. Hardy was a relative unknown in the film industry (Nemesis was only his third movie role) so it was easy for the blame for film’s failure to be taken out on a new actor. And Hardy took the criticism very hard.

Tom Hardy worked very hard in his role on Star Trek: Nemesis

Because he’d wanted to do well, Hardy worked extremely hard at his role as Shinzon. Tvovermind writer, Tom Foster, said that he thought Hardy was the only actor that “showed any real intensity since he was simply in the moment so often that he overshadowed the other characters.” But that didn’t stop the fans from unleashing a torrent of hate towards the actor, and it took a toll.

As the hate began pouring in , Hardy suffered a breakdown. The actor already suffered from dysthymia, which is a persistent depressive disorder, that he attempted to treat with alcohol and cocaine. The box office failure only made things worse. Whatculture reports that he even reached a point where he had contemplated suicide. It had looked like his future as an actor was over, and he was devastated.

Fortunately, Hardy went into rehab in 2003, and he’s been clean ever since. He rebounded fully with a prolific film career, including his role as Eddie Brock in the extremely successful Venom series, but it is sad that fans doled out so much vitriol for a movie. No matter if a movie fails or succeeds, there are real people behind those characters. And dousing them with hate serves no purpose.