Ben Hardy

Watch the drummer. In Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) the camera belongs to Rami Malek, and so does the film, but behind him at the Live Aid finale Ben Hardy is keeping time as Roger Taylor, and keeping it properly. Hardy has admitted how he got the job: "I told him I could play the drums—which I couldn’t at the time." He then learned, ten hours a day, so as not to be found out. We spent more of that finale watching the kit than we meant to, and it was because the hands, the shoulders and the face were all in time with one another, which is rarer on screen than it sounds. Our review called his Taylor the one who throws things, and that is fair; the script gives the band a sitcom shape. But the work is there under the type.

The career has the shape of a man waiting for the parts to catch up with the preparation. Two years of EastEnders (2013–2015) as Peter Beale, then straight into a studio ensemble as Archangel in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), the first of two films with Bryan Singer. Only the Brave (2017) gave him a supporting role in a fact-based ensemble and 6 Underground another in a louder one. Since Bohemian Rhapsody he has moved towards smaller films, Unicorns and Love at First Sight (both 2023), where the billing is higher and the rooms are smaller, and then back to a franchise with The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025).

The method is research. He studies archive footage, meets the people he is playing where he can, and has likened acting to anthropology, which is a grander word than the results need but describes them accurately: he arrives knowing how the person stands. The limit has been the parts. In Last Rites he is Tony Spera, at Judy Warren's side, and that clause is nearly the whole of the role. Michael Chaves's film is about the Warrens' feelings, and Hardy is one of the people they have feelings near. It is a decent, unfussy piece of standing about. Nobody asked him for more, and there is no way of telling from the screen what he might have done with it.

The lead in Unicorns is the part that might tell us, and since we have not reviewed it we will only note that it is the first time in years the film has been his to carry. He has said he wants roles he is not sure he can pull off. On the evidence of the drums, that is the right instinct: he does the ten hours and then looks as though he never needed them. Somebody should hand him a part that takes twenty.