Tom Hardy spat at Armie Hammer during their audition for 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' book says

• A new book on the making of "Mad Max: Fury Road" reveals how badly Tom Hardy wanted the lead role.
• The book says Hardy spat at Armie Hammer when the two auditioned for the role of Max.

Tom Hardy had a strange way of showing "Mad Max" franchise director George Miller that he wanted the lead role in 2015's "Mad Max: Fury Road."

According to an excerpt from the upcoming book on the making of the hit movie, "Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of 'Mad Max: Fury Road,'" that ran in Vulture, Hardy was up against some stiff competition for the role of Max and when he had to trade lines opposite Armie Hammer, who was also vying for the role, Hardy allegedly spat on him.

"Near the end of the process, Hardy emerged as a front-runner alongside Jeremy Renner and Armie Hammer," the book's author, New York Times columnist Kyle Buchanan wrote. "Hardy and Hammer even read together as part of their audition, and when Hardy gnashed his teeth and spat at his scene partner, Hammer told Miller that Hardy needed to be Max more than he did."

"Jeremy and Armie were equally wonderful, but there was something about Tom in the room where it felt like that was Max, without a doubt," Todd Matthew Grossman, who was the audition cameraman, told Buchanan. "He had that kind of suppressed emotional dryness that you'd find in a postapocalypse and, buried underneath it, disdain for the world. There was this intensity that burned through the lens."

Representatives for Hardy did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

"I had the same feeling about Tom that I had when [the original 'Mad Max' actor] Mel Gibson first walked into the room," Miller said. "There was a kind of edgy charm, the charisma of animals. You don't know what's going on in their inner depths, and yet they're enormously attractive."

The book also revealed other actors who were considered for the role, including Michael Fassbender, Joel Kinnaman, Heath Ledger, Eric Bana, and even Eminem.

The legendary rapper and "8 Mile" star was someone Miller had his eye on before Hardy was in the picture, according to the book.

"We did get in touch with him, though that's as far as it went because we were going to shoot it in Australia at that point, and he simply didn't want to leave home," Miller said about considering the Detroit, Michigan-based Eminem. "I think he had the impression that if he could do it out of his home state, then he'd be up for it."

"Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of 'Mad Max: Fury Road,'" will be released on February 22.