‘Venom’s Tom Hardy Reportedly Named New Baby After a Famous Movie Character

Venom star Tom Hardy and wife Charlotte Riley welcomed a second son, Forrest, reportedly named after the titular character made famous by Tom Hanks in 1994’s Forrest Gump, sources tell The Sun (via Independent).

Forrest is Hardy’s third son and the second child born to Hardy and Riley, who welcomed their first son in October 2015. Hardy is also the father of Louis, born in 2008, shared with former girlfriend Rachael Speed.

“They love the name Forrest as it’s earthy and strong,” the insider told The Sun. “Tom has always found the movie Forrest Gump very inspiring and enjoyable and thinks it fits.”

The source added friends report the baby “looks exactly like Tom.”

Hardy, who led the PG-13-rated Venom to $855 million worldwide after its October release, previously credited 10-year-old son Louis with inspiring him to portray the famed Spider-Man villain-slash-anti-hero.

“First and foremost I’m a dad. One of the things you come across as a father is a massive influx of stories brought to you after Fireman Sam by Spider-Mans and Venoms and Captain Americas. So, my son came to me with a specific character that he absolutely fell in love with,” Hardy told Variety in 2018.

“I started to take a look at it, and then, as if by magic, a script appeared on the horizon. Having had done [The] Dark Knight [Rises] with Chris [Nolan], I’d kind of done my superhero bit, but when I was presented with the opportunity to play Venom — and that correlated with my son’s love of Venom and how cool he was — I got really, really excited and decided I wanted to do it.”

Hardy later defended the rating — some longtime comic book fans would have preferred an R-rating in keeping with the character’s penchant for head-biting and brain-eating — in an interview with MTV International, acknowledging the character has a gruesome history but is also embraced by younger Marvel fans.

“My littlest ones, they watch Spider-Man and Venom quite comfortably and Venom toys appear and LEGO appear,” Hardy said.

“So it’s not like they’re scared by him, and at the same time there’s a lot in the real estate that you can actually imbue with a complete sense of gratuitous violence if you really wanted to, and I think you’ve got the right people for that job if you want to push it, ‘course that’s where I want to go with it.”

Hardy is already signed to a three-movie deal, with producers Sony Pictures expected to pit Eddie Brock and Venom against serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), a.k.a. the symbiote-powered Carnage, in Venom 2. The sequel, expected to drop October 2, 2020, is likely to move forward without Venom director Ruben Fleischer.