What Did Charles Bronson Tell Tom Hardy to Cut Off?

Tom Hardy says Charles Bronson told him to cut a little piece of himself off, no matter how much it hurts, in order to grow and move on. While Tom Hardy was training for the movie Bronson, the first time he spoke to Charles Bronson he laid out a pattern with women he could not break. Tom Hardy says he probably had a relationship with his mother that had infiltrated all his relationships with women.

Charles Bronson used to leave message after message, going back about three years, right through message 18. Tom Hardy finally picked up at six o'clock, just after he split up with his girlfriend. He said he was not in a good space. He could not be with a woman and he could not be without one. He was stuck in a triangle, repeating the same pattern and expecting a different outcome. Charles Bronson asked if he remembered the floods in Oxford, and the boy whose foot got stuck in a grate while the river kept rising until the boy drowned. Charles Bronson said the drowning would not have happened to him, because he would have said, cut it off.

Charles Bronson then put the point in plain words. Sometimes you have got to cut a little piece of yourself off, no matter how much it hurts, in order to grow and in order to move on.