Tom Hardy and six other actors who are totally unrecognisable in movie roles

Hardy completely vanishes under heavy make-up for his latest role - and he's not the first star to do so...

We’ve seen him grizzly (The Revenant), we’ve seen him bald (Bronson), and we’ve seen him bulky (Bronson, Warrior, The Dark Knight Rises) - not to mention scruffily dreamy IRL with his pooch.

But when a grimacing, rough-skinned man with fleshy jowls and just a few strands of greasy hair appeared on Tom Hardy’s Instagram feed this week, there was a collective squint and intake of breath as the internet realised it was, in fact, the actor.

It turns out Hardy has undergone quite a dramatic physical transformation for his role in the film Fonzo, in which he plays notorious gangster Al Capone. The movie is set when Capone was in his late 40s, suffering from dementia, haunted by his violent past, and presumably looking a bit worse for wear.

It’s inspired us to think of some other actors whose chameleon-like abilities have enabled them to transform themselves entirely - sometimes with a little help from the make-up department.

The former Batman might not have been an obvious choice to play former US Vice-President Dick Cheney in the upcoming film Backseat, external, being objectively younger and less portly. But Bale has used his body to disappear into roles many times during his Oscar winning career, ranging from becoming men's health mag-levels of ripped in American Psycho and The Dark Knight, to underweight and even emaciated in The Fighter and The Machinist.

But in the name of art, Bale has adopted the method approach to playing George W. Bush's powerful vice-president - by eating “a lot of pies”, external

For reference, here's a reminder of what Cheney actually looks like, pictured here with President Bush in 2007.

The 2012 movie Cloud Atlas takes place in multiple timelines and universes, and in ones strand, set in 1936, Halle Berry plays Jocasta Ayrs, a German-Jewish woman with light skin and blonde hair.

However, each of the lead actors in the film - an adaptation of David Mitchell's novel - were cast in five or six roles. Once you get to the 2144 segment, set in futuristic Neo Seoul, Berry radically transforms into Dr Ovid, a wrinkled old Korean man.

100% unrecognisable.

With his prosthetic nose and close-cropped hair, Carell is practically unrecognisable in the film Foxcatcher. It’s not surprising that the film was nominated for the make-up and hairstyling Oscar in 2015.

Apparently spending three hours in make-up every morning ended up alienating him, external from his co-stars Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo - which arguably just added to the tension between the guys' on-screen characters.

Her impersonation of Bob Dylan in the 2007 film I’m Not There is impeccable. The glorious Cate as we know her certainly isn't there.

She was one of six actors who played Dylan in the film, each taking on one of his personas – the others were Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, and Heath Ledger.

Pure dedication by Fiddy, who undertook a gruelling diet and fitness regime to prepare for the part of Deon, a football player whose career is on the ascent until he gets cancer. However, the rapper said his true motivation was the desire to honour his best friend, who had died of cancer, external.

Finally, there's the case of Affleck, who gave an, er, haunting performance as the mute, sheet-clad figure with two holes for eyes, in last year's A Ghost Story.

We're taking it on good faith that it really was him under the sheet all the way through. 

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Seven actors who look completely different to their characters