'Legend' wastes a wild Tom Hardy in dual role. Who also adapted the screenplay from John Pearson's book 'The Profession of Violence,' and the movie attempts to tell the story of the Krays.

I thought the film was great. I didn’t like the first one because it all boils down to casting. They’ve got to pick an actor who can frighten you. The Spandau Ballet boys did their best but they weren’t menacing enough. In this film, Tom Hardy is chilling. He’s got everything right as Reggie: the walk, the beautiful hands, the way he holds the cigarettes and that frown which was always quizzical as if he’s just about to ask you a question. And then, on the other hand, when he plays Ron, he’s menacing and he’s got the stare absolutely right. I think he gives a fabulous performance.

Reggie’s romance with Frances

They base the film mostly on the love story between Reggie and Frances and he really did love her and she did love him. Remember she’s got this older, good-looking, immaculately dressed businessman boyfriend and she’s a little 18-year-old from the east end and never been up the west to a nightclub. He treated her better than a princess, put her on a pedestal and there he wanted to keep her. In the film, he proposes to her by climbing up a drainpipe to her bedroom window. People will will say to me: “Well, that didn’t happen, it couldn’t possibly have happened, how could this menacing and violent man be so romantic?” But that was true. He used to go round there late at night with money in an envelope and push it through the letterbox, send her bouquets of flowers, trying to entice her away from the mother and father and back to him.

The Kray matriarch

She was dismissed and only in a couple of scenes. When I met [director] Brian Helgeland, I described Mrs Kray and how she was an influence. She was the most important person in their lives. They loved her endlessly and she had spoilt them from birth. He only bought Violet into two scenes whereas in the first film they made her very influential and she was well-acted. But of course, they were so angry with the first film because the script allowed their mother to swear and she never swore in her life. They were furious. They phoned from both prisons, screaming down the phone at the film-makers. They had great respect and admiration for women and wouldn’t harm them. When I would visit Ronnie in Broadmoor, he wouldn’t let me sit in the eyeline of Peter Sutcliffe.

Reggie’s physical attack on Frances

I’ve spoken to Chris Lambrianou and I’ve spoken to Freddie Foreman and people who knew him very well and that’s the only thing in the film that we don’t agree with. Where did they get that information that he could attack Frances? We don’t believe that happened. There would be no reason. It’s against all that we’ve said about Reggie.

Niece of Kray wife 'mortified' by new Tom Hardy-starring biopic

Ronnie and Mrs Kray’s mistreatment of Frances

With regards to Violet, I don’t know where they’ve got that from. That might be from the Shea family who’ve come forward. I’ve been in the house with Violet in her kitchen when Frances has been sitting there very timid, very frightened, waiting for Reggie to get home and Violet would always soothe her. Anybody that made her Reggie happy, she would be happy about. She would buy her little presents and try to calm her down when she was sitting there watching and waiting for him to come back. Ronnie didn’t like her but then Ronnie wouldn’t have liked any woman or any man, anything that took Reggie away from him because as I’ve said many many times, these weren’t two people, they were one person.

Ronnie’s open homosexuality

In the early 1960s when I met them, he obviously had the tendency. He was surrounded by young pretty guys. But then again, they were in a snooker hall or a nightclub and there would be young guys who would latch on and want to be with them for the glamour. But he knew no one in the east end who was homosexual so that was kept quiet. He’d told his mother and he told his brother Charlie. When Charlie told me, he was shocked and couldn’t understand it. Once they went up west, they met a lot of homosexuals and drank with them and mixed with them and went to parties with them. So therefore, Ronnie could come out a little bit more and then everybody knew. They met lots of singers and dancers and sportsmen that were gay but not openly so. A lot of men who really thought that there might be something there would never have said anything to him. He would have attacked them so they wouldn’t ask. Later on, it just became knowledge with the people that he considered “the firm”. It was accepted.

Legend Movie Tom Hardy Quotes

The morality

Legend Full Movie 2015

We don’t want to glamourise crime. They were glamourous but their crimes weren’t. I do have sympathy for all the victims and I’ve never condoned crime. It could have been my family that they’d killed. At the end of the film, the fact that it comes up on screen that they went to prison and both died: well what is glamourous about spending 32 years of your life in prison? I think it sends out the right message: if you go down this path, you will suffer like the Krays suffered.

The Movie Legend With Tom Hardy

• Legend is released in the UK on 9 September