Tom Hardy has taken another unexpected turn in his career — this time, back into music.

The British actor, best known for roles in The Dark Knight Rises, Venom and Mad Max: Fury Road, has released a new collaborative rap album under his musical alias Frankie Pulitzer.

Titled Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer, the project sees Hardy teaming up with underground hip-hop supergroup Czarface, made up of 7L & Esoteric and Wu-Tang Clan member Inspectah Deck.

Tom Hardy returns to rap

For many fans, Hardy’s rap career may come as a surprise.

But music has been part of his creative life for years.

Long before becoming one of Hollywood’s most recognisable actors, Hardy recorded hip-hop under different names, including Tommy No 1.

At the turn of the millennium, he made an album called Falling on Your Arse in 1999 with producer Edward Tracy, also known as Eddie Too Tall.

The project was never officially released at the time, but eventually surfaced online in 2018.

Since then, Hardy has quietly continued recording and has appeared on previous Czarface projects as well as several collaborative tracks.

Hollywood and comic books fill the lyrics

Hardy’s movie career is impossible to separate from the new album.

Throughout Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer, he fills his verses with references to films, superheroes, villains and actors.

On the track “Raw Forever,” Hardy references Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead, Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin from Spider-Man, Marvel villain Doctor Doom, DC character Sergeant Rock and Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon.

It gives the project a distinctly cinematic identity and makes the record feel closely connected to the pop-culture world Hardy already occupies as an actor.

Bane appears to make a comeback

One of the album’s most memorable moments arrives on “Grim-Visaged War.”

At the end of the track, Hardy recites part of Shakespeare’s Richard III using a deep, theatrical voice that strongly recalls Bane, the villain he played in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.

The resemblance is difficult to miss.

More than a decade after Hardy’s Bane became one of his most famous characters, the actor seems to be having fun revisiting some of that distinctive vocal style in an entirely different context.

From Kathy Bates to Thor

The album’s references become even more unpredictable on “Mad Technology.”

Hardy moves between Stephen King-inspired imagery and references to Cujo and Misery, before mentioning Oscar-winning actress Kathy Bates in one of the record’s most deliberately provocative lines.

The same verse also includes nods to Marvel’s Thor and actor Shameik Moore, known for voicing Miles Morales in the Spider-Verse films.

Elsewhere on the record, Hardy even works in a reference to Titanic and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The result is less like a conventional celebrity music project and more like an extended collision between underground rap, Hollywood, comic books and Hardy’s own filmography.

Why Frankie Pulitzer?

Hardy has kept the Frankie Pulitzer persona relatively mysterious.

He has not publicly explained much about the alter ego, despite recording and appearing on tracks under the name.

That separation makes the project particularly interesting.

Rather than marketing the album heavily around “Tom Hardy the Hollywood star,” the music exists within Czarface’s established underground hip-hop universe.

It allows Hardy to approach the project less like an actor releasing a novelty record and more like another rapper entering a deliberately eccentric creative world.

A very different celebrity side project

Actors releasing music is nothing new, but Hardy’s approach is unusually low-key.

There has been no dramatic reinvention or glossy pop rollout.

Instead, he has chosen underground hip-hop, dense references and an alias that keeps some distance between the music and his movie career.

At the same time, Hardy clearly has no interest in pretending those two worlds are completely separate.

Bane, Green Goblin, Doctor Doom, Shakespeare and Hollywood films all find their way into the lyrics.

And that may be what makes Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer feel so distinctly Tom Hardy: dark, strange, theatrical and far more unpredictable than the average celebrity album.