Tom Hiddleston Breaks Down His Career, from 'The Avengers' to 'Loki' | Vanity Fair

it was an extraordinary time it remains a very special memory for me the experience of making that first film because i had never worked on that scale before i'd never done a film with visual effects before or never done a film with a stunt department working at that capacity and doing wire work and action sequences it was just a thrill i remember just being awake and alive every day of that that job hi my name is tom hiddleston and this is the timeline of my career are you both ready ready ready oh my goodness he went deep deep cuts the life and adventures of nicholas nickleby i remember i was playing lord uh number two it was made in uh the summer of the year 2000. i was still studying as an undergraduate at the university of cambridge and it was in my summer break yeah i must have been at 19. and i had four days work and lord two was a member of the group of rather foppish and debauched young men who were in the company of sir mulberry hawk who is a rather rakish character in that novel played in this adaptation by dominic west i was required to drink a lot of wine and eat a lot of food and i learned a very profound and important lesson about filmmaking on my very first day we shot what is known as an establishing master shot of the entire scene at about 12 30 pm in this said master shot the direction was okay everybody else just eat as much as you can and drink as much as you can i hadn't had anything to eat for about six hours i thought i'm starving and all i have to do is eat as much as i can this is brilliant and i ate almost this entire lobster salad or fish salad or whatever it was in the first take and the director said called cut and said fantastic this is great tom fantastic um and we broke for lunch at which point i felt rather full and thought okay that's enough of that came back said right we're now moving into coverage and the continuity supervisor came up to me said so tom in the master you ate almost the entire plate of fish salad and you took eight gulps of wine and you now have to match your continuity for the rest of the day and i thought oh my god and nobody told me so i spent the entire day having to eat exactly as much as i'd eaten in the first take and learnt a very important and profound lesson about continuity on that day but it was an extraordinary job i suppose i had never been paid to work as an actor before that day um i'd always acted for fun it was my hobby as a school boy and a student i was very very nervous and then i couldn't wait to see it and it took months and months and months for it to come out and of course i was only in it for about 30 seconds story of my life and your death came by the son of odin thor i spent 2008 by sheer coincidence working as an actor alongside kenneth branagh we did a television series for the bbc called wallander and then after that i had done by again by a complete coincidence a play with ken so i had this experience of working with him as an actor and it was during the run of ivanov that um kenneth branagh announced that he was going to direct thor and i remember running up in uh into his dressing room and i had an empty water cooler in my hand and i i said it was a way of congratulating i was pretending it was thor's hammer it was completely absurd and um anyway months later the word got out i suppose that they wanted to find an unknown or two unknown actors for the lead roles and the casting directors randy hiller and sarah fenn who to whom i am forever indebted um called me in because i was six foot two and had blonde hair and um there were all sorts of of roles in this that i might be right for and um i remember i was well known now that i did a screen test for the role of thor but at the end of that long process they just decided i would be better suited for loki and it was the most life-changing moment for both myself and chris hemsworth two weeks later we were all we were in the same room and um reading scenes together and laughing and um and then ken sent us off to to go and train he wanted to spend some time with natalie portman working with jane foster and so he said chris and tom go and train together there's some tree trunks um in the garden for firewood so we were lifting these tree trunks and uh it was summertime we went for a swim and i remember it was when we were swimming we both chris and i looked at each other and thought wow we are two of the luckiest guys um in the world and we became first firm and fast friends and it was the beginning of a long extraordinary adventure in the world of marvel and asgard and the mcu you were an innocent child no you took me for a purpose what was it tell me 30 guineas isn't nearly enough to purchase a horse as fine as your joey i know that but it's all my god will you lease him to me albert to be my own mouth war horse was the most unlikely scenario in my recollection and that was kind of like a dream i was so familiar as a british actor with the extraordinary success of war horse as a piece of theater at the national theater in london and it was the most extraordinarily touching purely theatrical experience and i heard they were going to make a film of it and i think that steven spielberg had been to see the production thought this is this would make a great movie i think i was in the middle of making thorn i i was invited to put myself on tape and send an audition and i thought well there's no way i'm possibly going to get this because it's steven spielberg and he's the one of the great greatest filmmakers alive and working today and kind of the architect of my childhood imagination and it just seemed so impossible and unlikely and um i got a telephone call informing me that steven spielberg would like to meet me and at first i thought it was some sort of prank but nevertheless it was it was real and and so i drove over to his offices um at amblin and um which was surreal anyway so i met him and he was just curious to know about my life as an actor and where i trained and stuff and and then he just said well i'd love you to do it i think i said something like are you sure really um if he said well yeah if you'd like to do it i'd love you to do and i said yes i would love to i remember thinking right i've got to learn how to ride a horse really well and that became my project for the whole summer so it was quite a very exciting summer because something about working with animals is noble and peaceful and intelligent as those horses and when we did that cavalry charge [Music] good luck my friends [Music] there was a phalanx of i think 30 horses in formation and we were chasing a camera suspended on what's called a russian arm which is a mobile mechanical crane which you can suspend off the back of a 4x4 and galloping at full tilt chasing the camera or i thought to myself this is an unrepeatable experience this is something i'll never forget it was the cavalry charge was basically real um and the only thing that wasn't real was with the bullets in the in the machine guns on the other side it was a yeah it was a completely unforgettable day spielberg gave me the most extraordinary note which um for that he said the camera is going to pan across your face and so it'll come it'll start around your i think my left shoulder and come across across this way and as you feel the camera settle in front of you i want you basically want you to start um with everything you brought all the courage and determination that captain nichols has in this moment so it's almost like a war face you're a warrior and you're confident of your convictions and you have no fear um and then as the camera settles how old are you tom and i said i'm 29. he's okay when i say action i want you to be 29 29 29 29 29 war face and as you feel the camera settle i'd like you to de-age yourself by 20 years so you're nine show me the boy and i was like i just thought that was the most extraordinary piece of direct direction i'd ever received really it was um just so honest and intuitive and immediate and and yeah very i'll always i'll never forget that it was such an extraordinarily ambitious idea and kind of breathtaking in its daring and in its vision the experience of making it was a long summer in 2011 what felt like an extraordinary relay race of people doing a lap of the track and then handing the baton on to the next actor who would do a lap of the track and all of us wondering and hoping that our best efforts would coalesce into something that would feel fresh and exciting i remember there were some very exciting days on set when everybody was together and i thought wow look at these actors in these costumes and they've got such different energies the actors themselves had such different energies which was so exciting to see in contrast and to see robert downey at that time where he was with tony stark and chris evans where he was with captain america and they would face off or to see mark ruffalo invent the hulk in that particular way and scarlett was taking natasha and black widow in a direction that maybe hadn't been explored before in iron man 2. and chris hemsworth too like coming straight off the back of thor and feeling really confident about maybe both of us feeling more confident about about who thor and loki were and i remember when it came out and seeing it for the first time and and thinking this is so fun and the structure of it just seemed to work it was that that that shot of the six of them when it tracks around them and the hulk roars and i remember watching it i think at a screening in new york and the people just cheered spontaneously and i remember thinking phew okay okay it's it's uh it works and then also cheering when i got hulk smashed which is very satisfying and i will not be bullied [Applause] i thought you might need some help how did you get here i walked you walked put that yes i've seen worse okay you are crazy the night manager has has come around a brilliant novel by john le carre about a former soldier who with a complex internal world who works as a night manager of a very expensive hotel and there was something in the character presented this immaculate exterior which seemed very difficult to determine what was going on behind it i had this idea that it might be fun to go to a hotel and ask a real hotel manager what their experience was like and they were very very open to the idea so i went to this hotel in london and they said they said would you like to just come and shadow the night manager for a night so i turned up and i was wearing a suit and i i realized the importance of how they turned out they are they are pristine the way the way the uniform is pressed and prepared and the tie is just so and the type in and the hair is just right it's almost an act of the most effortless diplomacy you have to it's like theater there's a stage where the action is happening and there's a backstage where there's a whole team of people who are making sure that the show i suppose is running well i remember at night people would come up to me behind the desk and i would give them their keys and stuff and there was i was absolutely not recognized it was only in the morning at dawn around sort of seven o'clock people started to come down for breakfast and they'd hand in their hotel keys and say thank you so much and it's been a it's been such a lovely stay and do a kind of are you anyway it's been a very nice thank you so much thank you it's been very nice to uh to stay here you look very familiar oh it's i'm i'm sure i'm sure i do well anyway thanks it was a kind of they were kind of double taking and um and then a very a funny thing happened when we were filming the night manager in uh marrakech in morocco we were filming in a working hotel and so there were real guests at the hotel with real lives and and we were a skeleton crew shooting on long lenses and there was one shot in towards the end of the evening at about 11 o'clock i guess some real guests came back from having had a nice dinner and um they wanted to get their key and they came up to the they didn't see the cameras or the microphone or any of the lights and they came into the lobby and and said um yes uh room 303 please and i said absolutely sir and we uh there we are and gave them their key and they went up and and it was all in in camera and the crew were very tickled by it because it was sort of life and art merging but it was it was it was a very very um rewarding job the night manager unforgettable too for all sorts of reasons betrayal is strangely enough i remember reading it when i was a student at drama school i sort of was in the library one evening looking for another play and it popped out and i wanted to read it because i thought it just seemed like such an interesting short play with an interesting title and the construction of it is so brilliant i loved doing it i had a really meaningful experience doing i played robert and we did it in london um for 12 weeks i think in the spring of 2019 and we got called up by the producers and and they said would you like to take this to broadway and i'd never done theater in new york and to be invited to perform this um very brilliant play on broadway right in the heart of the community on 45th street at the jacobs was a huge honor and uh just the sheer energy of broadway the sheer numbers of people who move through those streets and make connections in different ways is uh is a very powerful idea actually and i can't wait for it to come back plead look this has been a very enjoyable pantomime but i'd like to go home now well you know what's interesting about loki is every time i've played him it's almost like playing a chord on the piano and then it goes out into the world and it echoes around the audience and the readers and the fans and and it kind of comes back and it comes back with new tones in there and maybe it's a few extra little grace notes and so what loki means to people continues to deepen and change and that what i found so interesting about playing him is that my first encounter with him was as a younger brother in a family who felt misunderstood and betrayed and had lots of vulnerability and distress and then every time i've been invited back you think well i don't want to do the same thing i did last time and so you'd start digging around more in the source material in the comics and in the old stories and there's just so much in there i mean he has so many different facets and one of the things i think i found most interesting about loki he's a shape-shifter he is the quintessential trickster a mercurial spirit who is flexible and fleet-footed and you can't pin him down you don't know whether you can trust him you don't know what his motivations are you don't know why he's doing what he's doing he's committing acts of provocation and transgression and disruption and across the films actually thor thor is always asking him what is it you want loki why what do you really want and i'm not i've always asked myself i wonder what he does want and i wonder if he even knows and so the question for me now is behind all the masks that he wears is there an authentic self there that he is aware of does he even care to know is he interested if he isn't is there a situation that might confront him with it and might that impel any kind of change and that in itself is a kind of human question is you know can we change are we capable of change do we know who we are really do we think we know who we are do we care all that stuff about identity and and self-knowledge is is um when you're playing with a character as complex and rich as loki's that becomes a really a really interesting dramatic question for an actor to uh to play with so i've enjoyed that enormously that's a lot of stuff to come through and thank you for watching that was the timeline of my career

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Id: klzMN_CLJcU

Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 25 2021