He's used to playing bad boys on the big screen and Tom Hardy has been to some dark places in real life too.

The Mad Max: Fury Road star has been opening up about the very serious drug addiction from his younger years in a new interview with Essentials.

He admitted that when he was hooked on booze and crack cocaine in his early and mid-twenties he "would have sold (his) mother for a rock of crack".

"I was a shameful suburban statistic," he declared.

"I was told very clearly, 'You go down that road, Tom, you won't come back. That's it. All you need to know'. That message stayed with me clearly for the rest of my days.

"I am f**king lucky to be here."

But despite playing a string of very hard men in the movies, the 37-year-old British hunk reckons he wouldn't say boo to a goose in real life.

Talking about typecasting, he said: "The trouble with Hollywood is they want you to be something, then they think you're who they wanted you to be.

"People didn't sit up and take any notice of me until I started putting on weight, kicking people and being aggressive! I'm not a fighter.

"I'm a petite little bourgeois boy from London."