British film star Tom Hardy is bulking up - for his upcoming role as villain Bane in Christopher Nolan’s next Batman installment, The Dark Knight Rises.

The Bafta winner showed of his already impressive 12 stone ripped, muscular physique when he appeared on Alan Carr’s Chatty Man on Monday, but revealed to the host that he has to gain more weight in order to reach the 13 and a half or 14 stone target.

"I'm going to need to bulk up a lot for it. That's a lot of weight to put on and I've got to start shooting in May. I'm 12 and a bit now, so I've got under three months to do that. Fat - a lot of fat. And trickery." He told Carr.

Hardy is no stranger to bulking up for starring roles, he famously gained an excessive amount of weight to portray Britain’s most notorious prisoner Chrales Bronson.

In order to gain the weight for Bronson Hardy’s regime consisted of non-specific exercises such as press ups, push ups, abs work and resistance training. When interviewed by AskMen Hardy said “My approach was to do a lot of repetitions in order to send messages to my muscles: this helps them start to grow in a way that you can’t make them in the gym. To achieve dense muscle, you need a specific kind of training.”

When asked how do you lose the weight once you have gained it Tom said “It’s much less daunting once you’ve put your foot on the road to it. I’m a notorious couch potato and I don’t like exercise. Half an hour of physical exercise, like jogging or fast walking a day is a start. Then there’s your diet. You cut out sugars, fat, soy sauces… anything that’s nice. Tea and coffee is replaced by boiling water with lemon. It’s amazing how quickly you get into it. There’s also herbal tea and a lot of water, obviously… about two litres a day. It’s about motivation and it has to be something that’s realistic for you to keep up.”