As the rugged ringleader of a 1960s motorcycle gang, Tom Hardy’s newest movie role in The Bikeriders (in theaters beginning June 21) is sure to find him hitting the screen at full throttle. But what fans of the Hollywood A-lister might not realize is that Hardy’s just one-half of a Hollywood couple whose relationship roots run deep through his own acting past.
Hardy and British actor Charlotte Riley have been married for almost a decade, having first tied the knot on the 4th of July all the way back in 2014. It’s a union that sparked after the future couple first met in 2009, on the set of a lavish period drama that teamed the two stars as a pair of romantic literary heavyweights.
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From box office smashes likeThe Dark Knight RisesandVenom to his earlier turns in critical film hits like Layer Cake (2004), Marie Antoinette (2006), and Inception (2010), Hardy has hardly been difficult to spot whenever a project he’s attached to percolates upward and into the spotlight. But through the birth of two children and a whole decade’s worth of celebrity-couple tabloid attention, Riley has also watched her own film career grow — and the odds are good that you’ve spotted her in way more than one high-profile project.
Who is Tom Hardy’s wife Charlotte Riley?
Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley arrive at the 'Dunkirk' World Premiere at Odeon Leicester Square on July 13, 2017 in London, England. Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images
Born in 1981 in the northern English village of Grindon, County Durham, Riley attended local schools and participated in local theater before eventually taking her talents to London, where she attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Landing her earliestTV roles round that same time, Riley nabbed her first big screen gig (opposite Jessica Biel and Colin Firth) in the 2008 British rom-com Easy Virtue.
The very next year, Riley landed a part that would forever change her personal fortunes, taking on the role of Catherine Earnshaw in the 2009 British event series adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The leading man playing her star-crossed love interest? Yep, it was none other than Tom Hardy, cast in the iconic antihero’s role of Heathcliff.
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Hardy’s screen career already had begun to take off at the time, thanks to his early-2000s appearances in films like Star Trek: Nemesis, Layer Cake, and Sucker Punch (and only three short years before his deliciously villainous role as Bane in Christopher Nolan’s crowning Batman trilogy flick The Dark Knight Rises). But as fate would have it, his casting alongside Riley would prove especially providential — and not just for either actor’s screen career.
Where have you seen Charlotte Riley onscreen?
As it turned out, Wuthering Heights wasn’t the only occasion when Riley and Hardy would star together — not even in 2009. The same year as their onscreen lovers’ meeting in Wuthering Heights, the acting duo also appeared in British TV crime drama The Take. With their offscreen chemistry quickly cementing even when the cameras weren’t rolling, Hardy proposed to Riley in 2010, launching a four-year courtship that formally ended when the pair married July 4, 2014.
Throughout that time and continuing all the way into the present day, Riley has maintained a busy but selective acting career even as her Hollywood husband has tackled a vast range of box office blockbusters including Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Dunkirk (2017), Venom (2018) and its sequels, and the upcoming action thriller Havoc (2025).
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Riley starred opposite Tom Cruise in the 2014 sci-fi action movie Edge of Tomorrow;joined the cast of the enormously popular British crime series Peaky Blinders;played the Ghost of Christmas Present in BBC’s 2019 adaptation of A Christmas Carol (which Hardy himself co-produced); and, most recently, portrayed enigmatic time traveler Aelita West (opposite Chloë Grace Moretz) in the trippy sci-fi series The Peripheral. All the while, she’s kept the pace steady through consistent television appearances, primarily in historical period dramas and lighthearted comedies including Close to the Enemy (2016), King Charles III (2017), and the oil-magnate miniseries saga Trust (2018).
Do Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley have children?
Since tying the knot in 2014, Charlotte Riley and Tom Hardy have welcomed two children of their own into their growing family —though they’ve successfully kept their kids’ private lives well separated from the media spotlight.
Although the couple has sustained a firm silence regarding details about their two children (including any public confirmation of their names), Riley reportedly (via People) gave birth to their first child —a daughter — late in 2015, followed in late 2018 (or perhaps early 2019) by the birth of their second child, a son. Riley, meanwhile, is also stepmother to Hardy’s older child, Louis Thomas, whom Hardy fathered from a previous relationship with film industry insider Rachel Speed.
Despite the couple’s understandable reluctance to subject their children to scrutinizing tabloid eyes, both Riley and Hardy have shared insight into how family life has help shape their relationship. “There was no longer very much time for me to think about myself anymore,” Hardy confided to the Daily Mail not long after the birth of their son, “…because there is somebody now on the planet who really needs me to get my act together and focus on something that is more important than me.”
Riley, meanwhile, has obliquely acknowledged the importance of children and family through her advocacy of the Keeping Families In Film campaign, a movement to improve on-set child care availability for working parents in the entertainment industry. “I've seen so many talented people leaving the industry when they became parents and just not being able to make their job, their film life, work in the industry with their family life,” she explained to Sky Newsin 2021 of her passion for the family-focused initiative.
Catch Tom Hardy alongside costars Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, and Norman Reedus in Focus Features’ upcoming motorcycle epic, The Bikeriders, in theaters beginning June 21. Grab your tickets here!
