As much as Hardy immerses himself into his roles, he never goes full-on method-actor. Instead, he told A.V. Club, he tries to keep himself firmly in between two different approaches. The first he refers to as “camouflage,” where you “put on a hat, a rubber nose, a cloak, put false teeth in, and I change my accent and walk with a limp.” Hardy pointed out the approach has been around for a while, from Greek tragedies and Vaudeville to Pixar Studios, where actors work with motion capture and must imagine themselves as animated characters.

The other approach he calls the “hustle,” which encompasses the drive one needs as an actor to take on different roles and go the extra mile in playing them. Hardy’s own whirlwind rise from “Black Hawk Down” to one of the biggest names in film and television is evidence enough of his commitment. But for the most part, the actor said he’s tried to have a “foot in both camps” so he can rely on the strengths of either to sustain him. Case in point: for his role as aging gangster Al Capone, Hardy relied on his Colin Farrell/Penguin-level camouflage to sink into the character.

“Now, you can do that in your own accent and have a healthy career, just changing different hats, having a nice haircut, a nice suntan, a six-pack, and a set of great teeth,” he said. “You can go a long way with that style of acting.” But that’s evidently not the path Hardy takes, since the one thing he never does is use his own voice for a role: “You can only have one shot at doing that, and then you’re done unless you make a career out of being you.”