The Dark Knight Rises looks set to be one of the biggest movies of 2012 and the British is one of the new faces on the cast list as Bane.
It has been a fairly quiet year for Hardy so far with just one outing in This Means War - but to be fair 2011 was a super successful twelve months with Warrior and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
This Means War saw the actor team up with Reese Witherspoon and Chris Pine in what was his first real stab and the action/comedy.
But The Dark Knight Rises is the movie that everyone is waiting for and it is the epic conclusion to Christopher Nolan's Batman franchise.
Hardy will play Bane for the first time and he promises to be the greatest villain that Christian Bale's Batman has faced.
Bane is a terrorist who is intention is to make Gotham City burn and will test Batman on ever level.
But Bane is a character that has a huge physical presence and Hardy gained 30 pounds for the role.
The Dark Knight grossed just over $1 billion four years ago and the new movie looks set to surpass its predecessor.
This is the second time that Hardy has worked with director Nolan after they teamed up for Inception back in 2010 - Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon Levitt will also reunite with the director for this movie.
In September the actor will swap the big budget blockbuster for the crime/drama Lawless, which is a big screen adaptation of Matt Bondurant's novel The Wettest County In The World.
Directed by John Hillcoat the movie teams Hardy up with Gary Oldman, Shia LaBeouf, Guy Pearce and Jessica Chastain and it competed for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.
Set in the 1920s prohibition-era America, Lawless is the true story of the Bondurant brothers. Brazen and fearless, these young rural bootleggers became legendary criminals.
And filming has got underway on Hardy's latest movie project Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie he has had in the pipeline for some time.
The actor is set to take on the role of Max Rockatansky in George Miller's new instalment of the franchise - it has been twenty seven years since a Mad Max movie last graced the big screen.
So Hardy has a busy second half of 2012 ahead and a very successful one as The Dark Knight Rises is poised to storm the box office.
The Dark Knight Rises is released 20th July
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw