Tom Hardy Used to Date a ‘Star Trek’ Actress

Tom Hardy is an A-list actor with some surprisingly deep connections to the Star Trek universe, both on-screen and off-screen. While some fans are aware of his personal work on the Star Trek franchise, some remain unaware of Hardy’s romantic ties to the world of Star Trek. Here’s a rundown of this actor’s romantic dalliance with a former Trek actress, along with notes on what Hardy and his ex have been up to since their split.

Tom Hardy Dated Linda Park

Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesActress Linda Park attends the 2018 Creative Arts Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 8, 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

According to ScreenRant, Tom Hardy dated Star Trek franchise actress Linda Park in the early 2000s. The couple got togehter in 2003. The couple lived together in London for a time, but ultimately split in 2004. Prior to their split, the couple were often spotted together at film events or theatre events. Hardy and Park were photographed together at the 2004 London premiere of the biopic De-Lovely. In a related story, the Guardian noted that Linda Park flew in from Los Angeles for Robert Delamere’s London stage shows, a project where Delamere was challenged open two plays on consecutive nights by Tom Hardy himself. Yahoo! notes that Park and Hardy appeared together in the play, but split shortly after the show ended.

At the time he was dating Linda Park, Hardy was also in the process of divorcing his first wife. The Daily Express notes that Hardy and first wife Sarah Ward didn’t officially divorce until 2004. After splitting from Park in 2004, Hardy ultimately ended up with another actress, Charlotte Riley. The couple met on the set of a 2009 TV production of Wuthering Heights, and were married in 2014.

Park also found love after her relationship with Hardy, also marrying in 2014. Park wed actor Daniel Bess after the two worked together in a theatre. Speaking of plays, Park herself famously played Maggie the Cat, the Elizabeth Taylor role, in a stage production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The production was notable as the first time Maggie was played by an Asian-American actress in a professional production.

Linda Park Was a Fan-Favorite on ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’

And if you didn’t know, Hoshi Sato died on Tarsus IV. Thanks for the happy ending, @_MichaelSussman! #StarTrek pic.twitter.com/4TCbcRx5FL

— TrekCore.com 🖖 (@TrekCore) August 24, 2017

While Linda Park may not have appeared in any of the Star Trek feature films, she’s well-known to fans of Star Trek: Enterprise. Parked played Hoshi Sato, the ship’s linguist and communications officer, during the length of the show’s run from 2001 to 2005. More recently, in 2020, Park had multi-episode arcs on shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Bosch.

While most versions of Star Trek feature some version of Universal Translator technology to allow communication between the various alien races, Enterprise was a slightly different beast. Park’s character, Hoshi Sato, was of vital importance in an era of Star Trek history before the UT had been perfected. Enterprise took place before the events of both Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Discovery. And as the tweet above noted, the character of Hoshi Sato died tragically on Tarsus IV.

Longtime fans of the Star Trek franchise may recall the massacre on Tarsus IV. While never seen on-screen in the original series, the events are referenced during the classic TOS episode The Conscience of the King. In that episode, Kirk recalls a traumatic incident from his childhood, where a crop failure on the colony of Tarsus IV resulted in mass murder by the colony’s governor. In order to make what little food the colony had last longer during the famine, Governor Kodos murdered half of the colony’s population, about 4,000 people. The episode is still beloved by fans today, with series insider Ronald D. Moore referring to The Conscience of the King as a “deeply underrated” episode of the original series.

Tom Hardy Is Also a ‘Star Trek’ Actor

You can see right away why Tom Hardy got the role as the villainous Shinzon in Star Trek: Nemesis. https://t.co/lvZHx43dta

— Nerdist (@nerdist) November 19, 2020

To many movie fans, Tom Hardy is Bane, or Mad Max, or Eddie Brock of Venom fame. But among Star Trek fans, Tom Hardy will always be remembered for his role in Star Trek: Nemesis. In that feature film, Hardy played Shinzon, a genetic clone of Jean-Luc Picard who ultimately takes over the Romulan Empire in a coup. The film is generally considered one of Hardy’s “big breaks” early in his career, alongside his performance as John A. Janovec in HBO’s critically-acclaimed miniseries Band of Brothers.

In an interview with IGN, Hardy revealed that he didn’t grow up being a Star Trek fan, but that he enjoyed a good working relatonship on set with Patrick Stewart. However, Hardy says the audition process to secure the role of Shinzon was “absolutely terrifying”. He added: “No matter how much you can prepare for it, there’s nothing worse than the anticipation. It’s always the killer of everything. The actuality of doing something is normally a lot easier than the waiting for it.”

The Romulans are one of the most secretive and most interesting of the alien races on Star Trek. They’re at the heart of fan-favorite episodes like The Enterprise Incident, inspire interesting fan theories, and played an important role in the world of Star Trek: Picard‘s first season.

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