Andrea Mandell

USA TODAY

TORONTO – Under all that brooding lies a teddy bear. Who hugs.

Known as one of the most electric actors on screen today, Tom Hardy has proven the depths of his darkness and the bounds of his physical force in movies from The Dark Knight Rises and Warrior to 2008's breakout Bronson. Mad Max: FuryRoad awaits, with George Miller's massively anticipated reboot hitting theaters next year.

Off-screen, the intensity persists; when he feels threatened, those massive shoulders rise, the tattoos that snake his muscular arms flex. But should Hardy, whose new crime tale The Drop hits theaters Friday, decide to be candid, he's a chummy delight.

"When my shoulders go up and I get grumpy, it's because I don't feel safe," he admits in a rare profile with USA TODAY. Over steak, those defenses go down, the phrase "do you know what I mean?" often peppering a frank discussion on fame, fortune and the accompanying fracas.

Hardy wades back into life's dark underbelly with The Drop playing Bob, a forceful barkeep bound by a city-wide mobster scheme that skims profits from all who operate in Brooklyn. His boss is bitter bar owner Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), a man who lost his standing when the Chechen Mob came to town.

Bob is classic Hardy: quiet volatility with moments of sweetness. His character finds a pit bull puppy in a stranger's (Noomi Rapace) trash can and rescues it — that hulking figure cradling a bit of found innocence.

"I love to do things I hadn't done before," says Hardy. Which explains that one time he tried on the big ol' studio rom-com This Means War – and, well, hated it.

"I didn't understand how you could do something which is so much fun and be so miserable doing it," he says, blaming himself for feeling "other" on set. So consider that box checked. "I probably won't do a romantic comedy again, do you know what I mean?"

The Drop director Michaël R. Roskam looks up from his own plate. "So you won't do mine?" he grins. "With you, it would be different!" says Hardy.

The Drop is Gandolfini's last movie, and Roskam had just begun to edit the footage when he found out the news of the actor's death.

"When he died, I went to the funeral in the morning and then took a cab back to the editing room," says Roskam. The responsibility was crushing. "The first thing I did was go through all the (footage) again."

"The man I met I loved," says Hardy. "He was a brilliant actor. Super talented. Super sensitive, vulnerable, emotionally articulate, generous, kind."

Next May, George Miller's Mad Max reboot hits theaters. After spending seven months in the Namibian desert shooting, the actor says he's seen "all of it," but the film is still "constantly evolving."

The trouble with $200 million budgets means Hardy's life will soon become part of the public domain. It's a status he struggles with, and partly why he declines from confirming if he's married to actress Charlotte Riley (Hardy has a young son from a previous relationship). "I hate being tracked or followed," says Hardy.

"I don't like it when people say, 'Well, you should have expected that when you accepted the job as an actor,' " he adds. "When you go to drama school, no one gives you a class on fame. … Just treat people how you wish to be treated. Whether I'm married or not married, people will find out. But it's also not something I'm going to offer."

Hardy just wrapped Legend, playing identical twin gangsters, and next he's jumping on a plane to shoot 1820s drama The Revenant with Leonardo DiCaprio – and then turning the dial to embody Elton John in the biopic Rocketman.

"I'm not really a road dog. I'm a bit of a homeboy," says Hardy, throwing a wink about his chef skills on the way out the door (his specialty: "cheese toasties"). But "the reality is, I love what I (expletive) do."