The 46-year-old actor says he sometimes prefers to learn about his character and get a sense of what is expected of him by having conversations with the director.
"Sometimes I don't read a script," Hardy told Collider.
"I'll ask somebody to tell me the story, like the director, because the case file of the script will corroborate what the director is really excited about, what they're trying to say, or what they're trying to do with a piece or a character.
"Sometimes now, I find that I prefer conversations with directors or writers, or the poly-cross of the two, to understand what it is that they're trying to do or what they want to do with the character."
The Mad Max: Fury Road star said while it might sound "as if I don't care", the opposite was true.
"Sometimes the case file doesn't corroborate what the director is trying to get at, or the writer," he said.
Hardy, who plays motorcycle club leader Johnny Davis in the new movie The Bikeriders, said he had to adjust to riding Harley-Davidsons from the 1950s and '60s during his work on the project.
"I like bikes," he said.
"I'm not particularly crazy on them, so I don't know that many super skills or anything, but I can get on one and move it about.
"The difference between the bikes that I ride is that they have brakes.
"Not that Harleys don't have brakes - they do - but these were sort of antiquarian bikes in many ways.
"They were there originally in 1958, 1960, 1963, '67.
"All the Harleys that were in the movie were timepieces.
"They were incredible for that very reason, but they have fundamental differences to the bikes that I ride today."
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