Have Tom Hardy's finances taken a £2 million blow?

Actor Tom Hardy may be gaining critical plaudits for his BBC TV drama, Taboo, but reports have claimed that financially the show is yet to pay off for the actor, writer and producer. Now reports suggest one of his bank accounts is looking worse for wear too.

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Hardy's own company made and financed the programme, and a report in The Sun back in January claimed that he was yet to make back his investment in the drama. At that point, he had spent £10.4 million making the programme, and earned back £8.4 million.

Now the same newspaper has claimed that the reserves in another one of his companies, 33 1/3rd, which apparently most of his earnings as an actor go into, have fallen from £2.8 million to £696,980.

So should we be having a whip-round for the acclaimed actor?

Good news for Tom

It seems this could be a bit premature.

There are a couple of key phrases in each of these stories that would seem to indicate that Hardy isn't quite on the breadline just yet. In terms of his investment in Taboo, the current state of play doesn't take account of the enormous sums to be made from the digital rights and from selling the programme around the world.

While it didn't get the kind of Saturday night audience it may have been hoping for on BBC 1, it has been a huge hit on iPlayer, so there's no doubt it will have a vast international audience. Hardy is therefore fully expected to make his money back eventually - with significant sums on top.

The report on Hardy's bank account, meanwhile, includes the vital phrase: "of course there is a chance he may have simply shifted the money from one account to another." We can't know Hardy's private financial arrangements - and some would argue that we have no right to know either. However, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that he has been using sound financial planning to ensure his assets are best used to fund any short-term cash flow issues.

Something to fall back on

There's no shortage of different figures conjured up by those trying to calculate what the actor is worth. Estimates range from £12 million to £24 million. The fact that he has played such a central role in blockbusters like Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Legend and Mad Max Fury Road, would indicate that he makes a reasonable living. Likewise, the plaudits and awards probably don't hurt his earning power either.

Meanwhile, he's hardly spending money hand-over-fist. In his notorious days before he cleaned up his act in 2003, it may have been another story, but by the time he spent a few days being interviewed for Esquire in 2014, the writer noted: "He doesn't like to spend money; he has a particular aversion to spending money on parking."

It seems therefore, that Hardy may still have the resources to keep the wolf from the door in the few months before Taboo becomes a runaway financial success.