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Tom Hiddleston - LIVIN LA VIDA LOKI - Total Film Issue 212 November 2103 [HQ]
In real life Tom Hiddleston is not so very different from the thorn in Thor’s side. OK, so he’s not a raven-haired, vainglorious alien god, obsessed with world domination and making minions kneel at his feet (at least, not in his public life anyway). Doesn’t wear a lot of green. He hasn’t been spotted rocking horned headgear on his days off. But if we’re talking about Loki’s intelligence, ambition, eloquence, charm and the relish with which he attacks life, Hiddleston shares a great deal with the God of Mischief. Well-read, self-aware, inquisitive, with formidable powers of recall (he can quote entire pages of Shakespeare at the drop of a hat and remember details with Rain Man-like specificity) and courtesy in spades, Hiddleston can talk the hind legs off a donkey and elegantly dodge a question like a true trickster.
And like Loki, though he may not have been the headline star in 2011’s Thor or 2012’s Avengers Assemble, he’s certainly made his presence known. Amassing a devoted following (known as Loki’s Army and Hiddlestoners) during his run as Thor’s duplicitous half-brother, it’s Hiddleston who was the obvious choice to work the (very large) room when Thor: The Dark World was introduced at Comic-Con this summer. Smuggled secretly into San Diego, his surprise appearance in full Loki ensemble (complete with the tart spitting of his famous Avengers Assemble rebuke “You quim!”) caused pandemonium in Hall H.
“Really it was more fun than should be allowed,” smiles Hiddleston when Total Film meets him for lunch in London a couple of months later. He’s dressed in a blue suit, his fair hair closely cropped and has arrived alone. No Tesseract or Chitauri chariot. “I love playing him, and it was such a nice way of saying thank you to all the people who loved it and supported the film and the character. It felt so amazing on the stage because it wasn’t a one-man show; it was a 7,001 show. The audience were as much a part of the performance as I was. In the theatre, if the audience is falling asleep, it’s incredibly hard for the actors to not respond to that. It sort of feels like someone’s falling asleep on you in bed. It’s like, ‘Am I that boring?’ But if the audience are chanting your name…” And how.
Which isn’t bad considering the 32-year-old Londoner originally auditioned for the role of Thor, only for the gods of casting to see potential for Loki; “Who knows how well I would have done [Thor]. To my mind Chris has done it to perfection. So I just don’t think it’s improvable. He is Thor. I just think it all worked out for the best.” Certainly did.
Despite a burgeoning career (TV’s Cranford and Wallander, two films with Joanna Hogg), the role of Loki has been a significant door opener and profile raiser, which has seen him nominated for a BAFTA rising star, win MTV gongs, teach the Cookie Monster delayed gratification and work relentlessly on a range of projects from Midnight In Paris and The Deep Blue Sea to War Horse and the BBC’s The Hollow Crown. (“I hadn’t had a holiday for years,” he admits during talk of a recent skiing break.) Such a career-defining role is the sort of thing that actors often come to loathe or belittle – but Hiddleston still retains the same enthusiasm for Loki that his own fans have. He knows the Marvel comics and Norse mythology inside out and (a fan’s dream) often talks in the first person when discussing Loki. But as a Cambridge and RADA grad, Hiddleston isn’t simply a naif blindly riding the wave either.
“[The role of Loki] is a blessing,” he says before one of his thoughtful pauses. “…at the moment. I can’t speak for how I’m going to feel when I’m 60, if I make it that far. Every time an actor plays a role, [the reaction to Loki] is what you’re hoping for, that it will catch the imagination of an audience and they’ll take the character to their hearts. For every character where that’s happened, there are thousands where it hasn’t. So yeah, a blessing, a privilege. It’s got to be, hasn’t it?”
That half-full philosophy and Loki-esque zeal is infectious in the flesh – “He’s magnetic and the joy he feels and the way he relishes life really comes across, people are really drawn to it,” says Thor: The Dark World director, Alan Taylor – and Hiddleston has expanded his fanbase exponentially via cheerful interaction on social media and personally (he good-naturedly poses for photos with fans as we leave the restaurant). A savvy move in a world now driven by the Twitterverse?
“I started [interacting] because it was nice to have my own voice. But I feel Twitter is kind of like a school noticeboard – some people put up important information, some put up graffiti, some put up jokes and some put up really terrible things. People, on the whole, are really nice to me.” He frowns. “But I have been in receipt of astonishing levels of vitriol and hatred. People will say the crudest, most offensive things, and you have to avoid getting into that. You have to be very careful not to be drawn into the riptide of the most destructive and cynical aspects of it.”
The non-cynical aspects are that Hiddleston’s fans raised £35,000 in his name for UNICEF and generally, he admits, are not the type to try to rip things off him in a feeding frenzy. And like a true shape shifter, he may be a huge star but he also manages to pass unnoticed when he wants to. While he might be recognised in airport security (“while you’re standing in your socks”) and screamed at in Hall H, he also leaves our lunch to travel home on the tube without interference. Fame, he muses, is transitory anyway. “It is all going to be washed away by the times. So it’s all temporary. I usually just have to treat it with a shrug and a sense of humour and not worry about it too much. I suppose the corollary is you make a public connection with your audience, and that has become what has been known as fame. The thing that keeps you safe is your curiosity.”
Hiddleston’s curiosity has lead to him to a number of diverse projects that are far removed from the Marvel universe. First up, Jim Jarmusch’s vampire drama Only Lovers Left Alive where Hiddleston’s 500 year-old exangiator Adam broods opposite Tilda Swinton’s blood-sipping Eve. It’s “deep and romantic, in a very offbeat way. It’s kind of… analogue. It’s not digital,” he says. “Adam is moody and depressive and is a creative genius in a way that I’m not. And Eve is much more enlightened, wiser and much more forgiving.”
From playing vampires to estate agents in longtime collaborator Joanna Hogg’s tender study of a marriage, Exhibition – a cameo he filmed on a couple of Saturdays during his days off from shooting Thor: The Dark World. And after that some singing and dancing as an escapologist in Muppets Most Wanted. “I’ve never had more fun on a set in my life,” he grins. “On my first day I’m on camera with Kermit. I actually couldn’t deal with it. I had to say, ‘Can we just stop for a minute?’”
Less giddy an experience but no less of a dream is playing Coriolanus in a three month run at London’s Donmar Warehouse starting in December. Scary? “Yes.” Right now he’s getting up at dawn and learning his iambic pentameter by marching round London and looking like a “mad man, talking to myself”. “The more I read it, the more I realise how contemporary it is. Right now, there’s a difference between commentary about Syria and the idea of action about Syria. Coriolanus is a man of action. He’s not a man of words. I really want to explore that.”
And after treading the boards, it’s off to join Guillermo del Toro’s haunted house horror Crimson Peak alongside Charlie Hunnan, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska, which del Toro has described as “kinky” and “R-rated”. And Robert Capa biopic Close Enough may still be go opposite Hayley Atwell, pending funding and scheduling; “I spent three months researching it and it’s something that I’d love to do.”
After that the world is his oyster. Loki is definitely not in sequel The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, nor Thor: The Dark World’s post-credit sequence and Hiddleston is tight-lipped when it comes to discussing whether the God of Mischief’s screen time was beefed up in the final edit of TDW due to fan demand (“What we’ve added has been basically putting in more of what works in the film, and then making clearer what it’s not”) or whether he’ll have his own spin-off or appear in other Marvel films. What about a film with Marvel comics’ saucy sorceress and Thor antagonist The Enchantress? “When I was first reading the comics, the relationship with the Enchantress was one of the really fun things I thought would be good to explore, and may have even pitched it to Kevin Feige at some point,” he says, vaguely admitting it would be “hilarious” if Loki popped up in further Iron Man or Captain America films.
Everything is up for grabs, because, if based on the unexpected embracing of Loki, surprises are something Hiddleston likes. “There are so many things I’d like to do. The last 12 months have been a complete surprise, including what happens in Thor: The Dark World. I didn’t know it was going to turn out this way. I just keep improvising…”