Actor, male, scarcely dropping line (3,5)

'actor male scarcely dropping line' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I can't tell whether this works.

'actor male scarcely dropping line' is the wordplay.
'actor male' becomes 'tom' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'scarcely' becomes 'hardly' (synonyms).
'dropping' is a deletion indicator.
'line' becomes 'l' (used when specifying particular lines from a poem).
'hardly' with 'l' taken away is 'hardy'.
'tom'+'hardy'='TOM HARDY'

Can you help me to learn more?