Tom Hiddleston - Times Talks Madrid

buenas tardes a todos just like Gwynn Philbrook the diarrhea New York Times es un gran placer Dallas la bienvenida todos aquí en el teatro Fernan gomez y por todo el mundo otra vez de nuestra Pina web esta noche less present ammos la tercera de una serie de entry visas in director del programa x talks Madrid parle New York Times es una nor Calabar are con la ciudad de madrid en la organización de esta serie de menos specialist en los que participant protagonist Esther CA del teatro della televisione a de la musica durante el fin de semana less presenter emos siete and revises entrevista x' in director a dose astray no step para películas nuevas ricean exhibitors and festival is testy name times talks is a programmer the eventos indirect Oh master staccato the New York Times most which is the most importance of collaborate with our journalists and now it is a great honor to introduce you my colleague from your terms parallelism there we talk to you in English about the guest tonight hello everyone this evenings guest is well known throughout the world for his award-winning work creating compelling characters on stage and scream including Loki Loki in Thor the Avengers and coming soon Thor - on London's West End stage he won the Laurence Olivier Award and the theatregoers Choice Award for both Othello and Yvonne off with Kenneth Branagh with whom he with whom he also appeared on TV in Wallander this summer he played Prince Hal and Henry v in his in a special production of Shakespeare's Henry the fourth and Henry the fifth on the BBC opposite a who's who of British acting legends including last night's times talks Madrid guest Jeremy Irons [Applause] here to interview him tonight is the theatre reporter for The New York Times Global Edition the International Herald Tribune based in London he writes about the stage the world of the stage and all the people who make it come to life he will be speaking with our moderator and with our intern with our guest and I'd love to introduce them right now so please join me in welcoming Matt wolf of the New York Times in the International Herald Tribune and our special guest Tom Hiddleston [Applause] Wow hello Wow Todd never welcome just another night in Madrid huh one way to be welcomed yeah I wonder if this audience knows that you have a prior history with this town in terms of having been onstage here tell us a little bit about that yeah well I madrid is one of my my favorite cities in the world because when I start truly and when I when I started acting I one of my very first Jobs was with a theater company called cheek-by-jowl and they're very well known in in England and they have long for the last 25 30 years staged huge productions of old plays with usually very young companies of actors who were often at the beginning of their acting lives and I joined the company in 2006 and did two productions The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and simbaline by William Shakespeare and we toured all the way around the world he went to to New York and Moscow and wreak havoc in Paris and Luxembourg and a la Magra we played our macro and and and but my favorite part was it was a six-month gig in and you rehearse it for six weeks and then you know off we go and it was just a group of us in our mid-20s and both tours we start rehearsing it on the on the first Monday of January and the last date of the of the of the gig would be Madrid in July at pepper espanol and and the Spanish I have to say it's the the interesting thing about touring was that you'd you'd encounter so many different responses to the play which were national and I've got to say the English audiences are the worst I like la like after touring you come back to London maybe like it wasn't easy azzam but it was in Madrid we had amazing responses I mean it's the two of us young you know it finished her yeah we'd finish here yeah wow so you must have had one hell of a closing party we did yeah and it's you know it was midsummer and and on platter Santana and and it felt so civilized to start you know curtain up at nine o'clock and curtain down at eleven and then you come outside they were still eating little feta Bertha and very very civil I loved it one of the great things Tom of course about writing about Theatre in London as I do is seeing these sort of beginnings of people's careers and then their careers develop in all sorts of ways as others obviously has but it seems like most British actors begin in the theatre pretty much most of the major ones and then they do or don't go on to cinema when you were in the theatre early on what did you think about a film career did it seem totally remote or were you always eyeing it or how did cinema soon gosh it's so hard to retro actively go back it's I've always been a fan a huge fan a cinephile of every stripe interested in in in movies and then in in sort of cinema as an art form from from being a child and you know my DVD collection is enormous as a student at RADA I used to run down to the not just the National Theatre but the the BFI and and watch you know reprints of Jacques Tati films and and and I saw 2001 for the first time on the big screen at the National films theater and you know so it was always a certainly a cinema fan but it seemed to me that I went to drama school ready to train to be a theatre actor because I knew that that drama school really gave you tools for stagecraft that you needed I thought and it gave you a kind of physical rigor and a professionalism in a way of attacking different texts and characters and and methodologies and and I wanted to sort of immerse myself in learning accents and stage fighting and and do everything from Shakespeare to Miller to Tennessee Williams and all these wonderful kind of the world of the theater and when I started in the theater it seemed very remote this movie world it seemed like you had to get it was like being picked to play for Manchester United or Real Madrid just impossible you know like it and it seemed very you know I would I would be in productions like the ones you saw at the Donmar or whatever and and I'd auditioned for films and people would say great audition not this time and I go okay and I actually I had him I started making a list I wanted to sort of make a list of Directors I'd met so I didn't forget them if I met them again and I had to stop making the list because I would never book anything and people would always call my agent and say you know Tom's terrific he's like we came to see him in the play there was always this question of finance and funding and needed you know I would just seemed like I was like well forget it it's never gonna happen and then I kind of um I suppose I kind of broke my own rules a bit and I became fascinated by I was very lucky in the theater to work with some very established film names I suppose I worked with them you and McGregor and to Attell Ejiofor in Othello and then I done television thing with Dame Judi Dench and obviously with Kenneth Branagh and and I found that their stories were quite interesting and they kind of demystified the whole thing for me they they sort of said I don't listen to what they tell you you know it's nonsense you know and there was a received wisdom certainly in my generation that to go to America and try and start a film career was you had to go on for the back of some enormous homegrown success like I don't know like you and in Trainspotting for example so so then actually I was signed by an agent in Los Angeles who came to see your fellow and that never happens you know an LA agent comes to see Shakespeare and goes that kid he looks good okay and I and I said it took a pump and went over to LA and and and just went with an open mind and an open heart and I got lucky I guess because what's fascinating is the way in which theater is threaded through your film work as will be shown in the clips that we look at yeah and so you've never entirely left theater behind even though of course the film work is its own well I feel like any actors lifeblood is the theater really truly because it sort of it reminds you of why you signed up there's something very raw and very pure about standing in front of an audience live and performing a story from beginning to end every night and you can't retake and an editor can't sniff out the best pits or the worst bits and it's very pure and it's very there's an immediacy and an immediacy of connection with the audience that is amazing and we live in the world now where everything electronic and technological is faster and easier and you know our media now is is insanely quick and I said to a friend of mine the other day I said there's basically an app for everything but there's no app for acting like it's still the same art that it was for the last 3,000 years since people started standing up and singing songs and telling poems you know it's you still have to learn the lines and stand up and open yourself and be as truthful as you possibly can so I think I think that's why theater is so important and so a part of any actors work in a way and that segues really well to the first of several clips from Tom's work that we're going to look at which is actually a fully realized adaptation for the cinema by the director Terrence Davis of a classic English play from the 1950s called the deep blue sea by turns Ratigan so let's look at the clip of Tom from the deep blue sea and then we will hear more about it okay not edited out when you were filming presumably what gallery was that that was a gallery in Greenwich yeah it was obviously supposed to be the National Gallery so the artist may may not know much about this film of the material but it's it's one of the landmark British plays but it could be a post-war period very English very wounding pretty grim dealing with betrayal potential suicide and so on yeah what did you feel about taking it on did you know the play I knew of it I had never seen it and I'd read about it a lot and I read about an amazing productions of it and it was what I doing I was think I think I was in the middle of shooting War Horse Steven Spielberg's War Horse and the script came to me and I read it on earth sort of on earth sort of day on a day where somebody else had to be on the horse I thought I read it very quickly and very if I found it it was very short to the screenplay because Terence Davis writes the shots in so it's it moves at a hell of a pace and I knew that Rachel Weisz was already attached to play Hester and Simon Russell Beale was attached to play kaalia her husband and I read this character character and the whole thing it just was a very simple refined reduced sort of poem like a hymn to different kinds of romantic love and every character in the play is in need of love from another but each of their ideas of love is different and I thought it was so true and so tragic that Hester needs Freddy and Kali and needs Hester and Freddy needs Hester but they need each other in such different ways and they're all coming from such different places because they are they each carry a particular kind of damage and it was very beautiful than I'd been an admirer of Terence for a long time his distant voice is still lives I think is among the greatest British films that I've ever seen and he had a very particular you know hidden knowing that it was him and his taste and his he uses music very beautifully and editing in the way he shoots things and I just the combination it was like I must play this part and I had to audition and it was one of those auditions where I I remember I learnt the entire film just in case there was Justin Casey I had to do a scene that I hadn't prepared and and and Terrence and I ended up basically playing the entire film one morning and and then he asked me to do it and it was thrilling I added it was an amazing amazing job and Rachael is brilliant and beautiful and brave the material of course is very richly and robustly English yeah and one of the things we were talking with this a little bit last night with Jeremy Irons one of the things that sometimes comes up with English actors is to what extent did they want to embrace the Englishness Britishness of the work themselves yeah and to what extent did they want to leave that behind of course in Woody Allen's film Midnight in Paris you play F scott Fitzgerald which is pretty good at leaving Englishness behind but with this do you think yeah this is part of my heritage yes I think so and I'd also I think I adjust I just finished a run of I just played that year I played Loki and Thor already and I just I'd already a shot midnight in paris and and it was a very gonna be very quick shoot we shot in 23 days or something and it was a small production I just thought this is something I would love to do and for something it was something to do with the my understanding of a particular time in British history which is not often focused on and I felt that Freddie Paige was an emblem of the kind of soldier who survived the Second World War so he was in the he was a bomber pilot and he came back very distinguished with lots of medals and and military rewards but he's so damaged and he's expected by society in the early 50s to readjust to retrain as an accountant or a solicitor and and sort of be okay with it and this is in the days before therapy was you know was being talked about and you know there's Terence that one day you can't put a whole country into therapy and Freddie's sort of alive with he's just desperate to live he's desperate to to drive 95 miles an hour down the Great West Road to drink in Department Singh and he's just got this kind of vitality that's that's deeply destructive but also electric that she's attracted to and I thought in terms of deconstructing Britishness that was quite a fascinating place to go to and also in terms of juggling scale as you say I mean you'd already shot four and they did this yeah so to go from something huge an epic and clearly a blockbuster yeah to in intimate chamber piece well it was a blast of love but that was the thing actually that was the thing as I was so ice it was a film about love and I'd done a lot of fighting that here and you know it just was playing a cavalry officer charging into the front line and and Loki is there's a lot of fighting in his own way and it's it was so nice to just to try and get inside what happens between a man and a woman in an intimate space and it didn't matter to me that it was period and and actually Terrence and Rachel weren't interested in making a period piece I think if you make a period piece there's no point in in kind of emptily honoring the period if it doesn't speak to your time and you know ultimately sister film about two people who can't love each other in the right way and interestingly of course Loki does have a theatrical thread because Thor was directed by somebody with whom you'd appeared on screen many times and actually on stage yeah Kenneth Branagh and your wonderful performance in Chekov Sivan off on the West End when you were doing that play with with Ken was he sort of taking backstage going you know actually I've got this little blockbuster bubbling up which I quite like you to do when you finish this chatter staff truly truly truly it was funny because in my history with with Ken is so random we both kind of acknowledge how random it is it he saw me in Othello at the Donmar Warehouse and he then asked me to do a radio play with him of Cyrano de Bergerac and that was a bit of it for three days for BBC Radio 3 and then michael grandage and Tom Stoppard had written the adaptation of Yvonne off asked me to be in a van off so I sort of had nothing to do with Ken but then he also had asked me to be in Wallander which is this adaptation of Swedish detective thrillers so suddenly we were both staring down the barrel of an entire year together and but it was fantastic and it was during Yvonne off that it was announced that he was directing Thor and I kid you not I was dressed I had a goatee and I was playing a very pretty Sh self-righteous Russian doctor as check off beautifully often writes and and he was so full of ideological fire and brimstone and was wearing you know braces in a waistcoat and I looked so far from superheroic this he could imagine and a little pocket watch and you know why our inspector calls and my little sort of book and the notes I would taken and when when it was announced that he was directing the film in the interval I ran up to his dressing room with an enormous empty water cooler pretending it was for the hammer of Thor in costume and and you got the job right here because it was so in my own mind it was so outrageously unavailable you know it was just not gonna there was no way I was gonna be considered and then it so happened that I was talking to my la agent who'd seen me not alowed it after that and I was in Los Angeles kind of noodling around sort of seeing what was there and and he was there too and he he asked me to come an audition for the role of Thor because at that time I mean it's sort of an amazing character in a way because it's like on one level Chris Hemsworth you ended up getting it and who is monumental in the wrong I have to say and he's a dear friend and so there's absolutely no bad blood between us at all he requires such physical stature but also he requires a great actor who can go from arrogance to vulnerability to but who can also sell the action of a big blockbuster and you know and so they were really didn't know what they wanted so they were looking at everybody and I was over six-foot and blond so I passed muster there and I auditioned and then eventually sort of got down to the wire and the producers sort of said you know this guy's kind of it's all right like we should put him in the film somewhere and and and I should say publicly and I'm pleased to be able to say that i io kenneth branagh and in enormous debt of gratitude just I own so much because because the business is so often but that side of it that the big movie business not the art not the people pursuit of the creative people but the people with the the dollars they're so scared of investing in something that's you know not going to work in and and Ken was able to say to producers on a film that cost a lot of money Tom well Mike he's got it don't worry in and and and to do that it's just an amazing thing to do for a young actor like everyone needs a break and like I've said there were many many many people there's a long list of people who didn't give it to me and I ever started to think that it you know it was kind of never gonna happen it's funny cuz he's almost been sort of this guiding light throughout your career in an odd way he would probably like it would probably be so ashamed to hear you say that but he has been and he he's been very very inspiring no not just because he's never it isn't that the thing is he's never given me advice he's never taught me how to do anything but he's always just by virtue of how he works I found very very inspiring his extraordinary diligence and care and industriousness and professionalism and I've never seen him literally not run at the day at the amount of he's got such energy and he's never he never takes anything for granted and it's never over he's still you reads or he just reads everything and he's kind of a very very searching curious intellect well you talked about the physical transformation that you effected in order to be in a Vaughn off and of course you had a completely different physical transformation to do the Thor sequence and you're currently shooting the third one in the series yeah but before we talk further about that let's look at the next clip which is from the Avengers oh my goodness [Applause] so um huh where do we begin the hair the boots the garb the voice oh my goodness what is it like when you look at that what do you think it's funny sort of talk so high-minded Lee about industriousness and diligence and really it's just wearing silly costume it's I I'm so proud to be in that film because there's part of me and I think there's part of part of any actor it's basically still a five year old child and I grew up watching things like Christopher Reeve in Superman and Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and and you know superheroes it's the biggest it's tight it's it's a toy box and I love playing that character because he's actually really complex for a superhero first of supervillain and I part of the appeal is is to do with the physical transformation because I've never wanted to be in that kind of threads into what we were saying about Britishness I've never wanted to be boxed in by by a type of character that I always play I find I would get I would I just wouldn't find it very interesting and I didn't think anyone else would and part of the reason I'm an actor is I'm interested in in different shades of the truth in different parts of life and how quite often with like the human race is bound together by by a certain unity in things and and that acting and whatever you're in is about excavating the things that make us all the same birth death love grief loss loneliness gratitude generosity humor solitude and all of those things exists in every in every story in any time in any place and that I saw the joy for me sorry join for me of of of playing different people from different times in different costumes with different hair color and and you know in different shades is that whether it's the deep blue sea or if on off or the Avengers you're still kind of digging around in humanity and the fun stuff is that you know in Avengers you get to fly through the air and and and and be beaten almost to a pulp by the Incredible Hulk which not many actors have done doesn't happen a Chuck yeah yeah exactly doesn't happen in Chekhov and I loved it you know I I loved the fact that um I loved that you're taking this picture I mean I'm Here I am I've got blond hair I was born in London and I you know it was never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be playing the Norse god of mischief come down to to tyrannize the human race and take over the planet because I've got some you know daddy issues and some brother issues and and I want my throne you know and you know it but also in in a film like that which is which is so beautifully tied together actually it's actually very tightly written and it's very entertaining and very funny and I got to work with people like Robert Downey jr. and and samuel l.jackson know it's a great cast of people and so I lost about the look I mean what do you shape it you said what by her to be longer shorter more you know breastplate boots how do you get to the look well I I'm starting to well I had a long time initially before the first Thor film I simply started with the great thing about the character is is actually ancient he is part of Norse mythology which goes back as as far if not further than the greco-roman mythology and lyokha look turns up in Scandinavian myths every way he was like Dionysus or Bacchus he was he was the spirit who people were afraid of you know he was the monster that parents told their children about a knight and sorry for him he but it's fascinating you read the Norse myths and you realized that there's actually a huge amount of material there and then what Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did when they started drawing the Marvel comics in the 60s is that when they invented Thor and Loki and Odin they were borrowing and very honestly kind of sort of stealing from this this pantheon of Norse gods and then so I read all the comics and it starts off being much sillier than than even I died I did it in in the first runs of the comics Loki comes down and he turns a whole Street of cars in New York into ice cream because he thinks it's honey it kind of it and and he changes it you know he looks very much like a comic book character and so there is a thing of trying to be true to the look of the comic book because that's what we're doing is we're giving you know we're making a film of a comic but also trying to make it palatable to a regular film going audience who just like movies and and but making it a real story about genuinely about a father and two sons and something that people could connect to so Ken and I talked about the Shakespearean references of fathers and sons and brothers and what you know it's shot through with with all that stuff and then in terms of creating the look we just talked about it and said you know how do we make something that's both regal and kind of athletic and sort of majestic and also dark but also practical you know because you have to get through the day and and and fight in it so it has to move so it's a very complicated sort of scenario and then as the Americans have this word which i think is kind of untranslatable which is badass gente he's a badass a badass and so like and so sometimes you'd be nice the Marvel producers are great because they go you know a time we kind of me want you want you to look like why he'd be able to move and we want you to be able to kind of you know we basically want you to look awesome and badass you go okay and then you sort of experiment and but it's fun because because I think I think he just looks kind of he's gothic and pale and damaged and it's like it's almost like a mask it's like like any character you need a mask through which to project that particular truth Loki's truth is one of insanity and deranged evil and he's you know hurt and lost and lonely but but dyeing my hair black and sort of painting my face in a way it gives me so much so that after two hours of sitting and makeup and going through costume you look in the mirror and you're a completely different shape and it you know it's it's kind of interesting mask work anyway and you're back in this world of course again further for the next installment yeah do you want to whet the audience's appetite with just a little bit of where the journey takes us now I want to tell you but I would have you'd have to be shot yeah I would have to kill you all which I'm so lucky would love to do but I know what's in this home no I just can't I can't say anything my hands are tied there are probably snipers hired by Marvel what's wonderful though is that you were talking about fathers and sons in the Shakespearean affinity that that this triptych yeah lack of a better word may contain and that segues very neatly to another project which has echoes of Kenneth Branagh and it also has echoes of last night in that we met your father yeah and in Henry for one and two and then of course you carry it forward in Henry v so before we talk about this further let's look at a clip of Tom in the title world of Shakespeare's Henry v so here you are playing a role that when you were seven if I've done my mouths correctly when you were seven Kenneth Branagh did on screen getting Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Director did you when you got this assignment for the BBC call him up and go what do I do huh you know I I didn't actually and he emailed me first because I was in the middle of shooting The Avengers and I was in New Mexico and he said he'd heard about it and I said I said immediately like obviously not even come close to yours and he said look I just have a great time enjoy it and and he we there we then talked about ice my saw him or something in London and he was just so excited that they was happening because first and foremost he's a fan he loved Shakespeare so much and the more there is the better as far as he's concerned and and he loved that they were doing the sort of four of them in sequence Richard the second Henry the fourth part one part two and Henry five and I don't know I can't think if an actor has ever had has been as lucky as I have been in a way and done all three on film people died on stage yeah and people have played how and the Henry five and but but it was to do the whole journey was amazing and actually I received an email from him in the summer over the summer and he said basically he said he'd watched it and he he just thought it was amazing and he was so proud and very sweetly very proud of what I done but more proud of what what everybody had done what Richard Eyre had done and and Thea Sharrock and absolutely he was raving about Jeremy Irons just said you know it was amazing to see Henry the fourth at the center of that play again and on both plays and just thought it was stick that it was happening and you know one hopes that it gives the BBC confidence to Commission more and and because it was it was something that Shakespeare is as a British citizen you know it has our greatest artistic inheritance in a way and we should do more you know but that he should be on television more so I was so lucky to get to do them the amazing thing of course as you know about any Shakespeare in Britain is that they come in battalions and the week that you're Henry five was shown on the BBC in in the UK I actually saw two stage productions of it the same week when at Shakespeare's Globe and then the propellor version at a Theatre in North London called the Hampstead my question is what is that like for an actor taking on these iconic parts when you know that the comparisons are ubiquitous well I sort of I knew if I was gonna play Henry the fifth and having worked so much with Kenneth Branagh I was like well it's gonna happen and I just sort of let that go immediately and you know the first the first emotion because actually it was it they happened quite far apart Richard Eyre bizarrely I met in Singapore Airport at two o'clock in the morning he was on his way to open Mary Poppins in Sydney and I was on my way to Sydney to go to the world premiere of Thor and we've been trying to meet in London the week before and we hadn't managed it and I we were getting off the plane to change planes and I said hello and he said Tom what are you doing here and then we talked about Prince Hal and and then I remember him asking me to do it on the day of the Royal Wedding bizarrely I was watching the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge process up the aisle in and it was very sort of majestic and and a scene of pageantry and I thought it was kind of interesting that he'd asked me to do it that day but then the henry v idea didn't come until later when when the producers Pippa Harris and Sam Mendes were thinking wouldn't it be interesting to ask maybe to ask Tom to do it because he can do the hop you can do all of this Oh wasn't it to be a package no no initially and so then I had to fly back and meet the air because I'd never met her before even though I'd been a huge fan of her work and you know I we did a few he sort of read a bit and then she asked me to do it and then the first feeling is one of it's a mixture of intense excitement and fear because it feels like it kind of a huge mountain you have to climb but it then it become once you start working on it and learning it it becomes the greatest privilege that you simply you get to inhabit these words that have existed for 500 years or 400 or whatever is between and the wisdom and compassion and eloquence in the writing is something that is the greatest gift of any actor because you don't it's not just like reading it you have to absorb the words and the feelings behind the words and then perform the action in between them and so you'll it's literally I think it's sort of like you know when you go to a country you never visited and it kind of changes you let's say you let's say you've never been to Spain before and you came to Spain and you'd be like I've been to Spain and I think it's a wonderful place and I've seen the world in a different way I kind of feel with the best characters it's it's a little bit like that this is you play a character and it sort of changes you because you've had the experience of living inside that spirit and of course it's all Shakespeare it's all his own brain well what's interesting and I want to open it up to questions after this so please be thinking of questions for Tom to begin after this often when you see Henry v on stage it's an exercise in heroism yeah and rabble-rousing and it's full of fire and brimstone and briault what I thought was really lovely about Thea's version and your performance in it and maybe this is what the cinema allows is that it was interior more contemplative very self questioning seemed as if he had a profound relationship with God which sometimes on stage doesn't register yeah and I just wonder if you could talk about that in the way in which maybe doing it for camera shaped your portrayal well somebody said to me the thing about film is is is actually the best film acting is when you're not doing anything and actors or anyone in stillness is kind of captivating and if you watch any Bergman film you sort of level that's the first thing that jumps out of your house till everything is and so I knew that I knew that there was an opportunity for an intimacy in a way that might there's something someone said to me that that you know the camera could see what you're thinking and and Terence Davis said on the deep blue sea said the camera captures truth but it also captures falsity so if you don't feel it don't do it and it's and it's sort of ruthless in that way and theatrical technique you know where you'll present the is as sometimes more of a presentational medium and that's that's never going to help you in front of a camera so I thought that you know Shakespeare is so theatrical in itself so wordy it's so dense and it was a challenge to try and make it small but also feel big and the god question is interesting cuz I when I've kept you know I just kept reading the play and I kept seeing how many times he he prays to God he appeals to God and Henry the fourth does the same and there's so many references to to God and you've we tend to forget because we live in a different world but but this is a society who believed in the Divine Right of Kings that that you were inherited the throne and that you inherited by divine right and so when he says oh god of battles steal my soldiers hearts he appealing to some to God and at the end of the at the end of the Battle of Agincourt damn it through my host to boast of this victory or take the praise from God which is his only and it happens again all the time in Henry four is this constant praying people pray the night before the battle he says O God think not upon the fault my father made encompassing the crown so there's a piety there that I thought was fascinating he's almost inhabiting a chivalric code that he believes that he waged this war with France with the throne of France because the Archbishop of Canterbury who has you know a hot light the red phone to God had told him that it was it was okay and the other thing I should say I suppose is Thea and I kept thinking about leadership and we're both of a generation that have grown up with political and military leaders who tend to reveal themselves after a time to not be trustworthy and we didn't and so there's this thing about rhetoric as in people standing up above everybody else and making big speeches and Thea and I it's we talked so much about seeing British politicians at party political conferences standing up and making big speeches promising things and saying follow me and then everybody follows them and then you know two years or three of the four years later they break all their promises and everyone's let down so I thought how many the fifth was this extraordinary leader because he was actually there he was the King of England but he was also captain of his ruin'd band as in he was leading the charge he was at the front line of his army and we don't have that anymore the people who say let's go to war aren't the people driving the tanks and and Henry did and I thought that was amazing and we had this shorthand which was get off the horse as in any leader who really believed in his power as a leader doesn't need to be up above everybody else and and so the some of the I suppose the smaller I made decision made us would make quite rebellious decisions to try and make the big speeches smaller because I thought if I was a soldier and I was staring my death in the face what I would want from the person who told me to be there was somebody on the ground at my side saying I am as scared as you are and I'm coming with you let's go I didn't I didn't want to be like listening to big words from someone way over there on a horse on a podium I thought what would move me was someone literally moving like being grounded being a part of his army and so that was our sort of big decision in a way well that's a beautiful answer it really feels the beautiful performance thank you thank you let's have some beautiful questions oh my god we're gonna be here till midnight that person just there in the front yes you I yeah you yes you thank you for coming here thank you second of all I have to say this you're my favorite actor and I think you are the best actor of your generation thank you the Oscars are coming don't worry okay you're gonna win a bunch of other so I I just wanted to say that I did a drawing of you because a you are like my second Idol and I just wanted to give it to you [Applause] you can check how the other going to be water I have also iron here check them out you want that's their incredible and there's also another girl here that's pretty cool huh sir another toy there you go [Applause] just does anyone have a question or you all bring you gifts for Tom it's our question yes just there yes you afternoon my name is Eva I would like to know if in your in the near future you are preparing some project in the line of the deep blue sea the deep blue sea yeah but more things like that yes in this this kind of movie is the movies I like to watch you on the screen thank you some more yeah well I I just I just spent the summer making a film with a director called Jim Jarmusch who you may know and the film is called only lovers left alive and I it's a very small film and they're very there's only sort of five characters in it but it's really about two people a man and a woman and I play the man and [Applause] [Laughter] and Tilda Swinton plays the woman so and it's kind of about again it's about love really it's about commitment and yeah just the the the tenderness and complexity of that engagement you know what happens in the space between a man and a woman it was beautiful it's lovely to work with both of them they're amazing amazing artists [Applause] saying it was a surprise okay good thank you is that a present there okay can we keep the presents for later just so that we get through the questions cuz otherwise it's going to be like Christmas amazing yes one says go ahead yes in Spanish okay we need headphones headphones I'd like to ask here how you in the tavern of a sin with Henry the fourth when you play Jimmy Ellis how do we prepare this sin in the tavern in that saloon when you imitate to your father how do you prepare this imitation because it's just a beautiful conceit that the scene before prints how goes to see his father and is roundly chastised for misbehaving that that Falstaff suggests that before he goes he should have a dress rehearsal and Falstaff plays the king you know telling giving Hal a reprimand and then how has the idea to be his father and Falstaff be how and Jeremy actually was very very kind in recording himself saying the speech that I had to say so that I could do an impression of him basically wonderful spray so so I very early on I got a kind of mp3 of Jeremy's amazing voice simply reading what what what I had to say and then I made a terrible kind of hopelessly pantomime a compression of it but I hope he's not too offended by it is there a question just behind somewhere there yes that woman there yeah yes yes you sorry I'm totally nervous when you are on stage in a theater you see the success immediately but when you are making a movie it comes later and in a theater it's only the audience you can see but in a movie it could be worldwide so how is it if you if you see the success you have later and so much it's a really good question it's kind of strange actually because it feels like sometimes it feels like I said this to my mum recently that you make so you make a film and then you finish it and while you're making it especially with the Marvel films it is also secret that I get so excited about it while I'm making it and then it finishes and it takes 8 or 9 or 10 or months to come out and by the time it comes out and everyone else is excited about it you're in the middle of something else usually and this is what I said to my mom my kid it's like somebody in September saying how is your Christmas and you go it was I guess it was okay I mean it was Christmas it was ages ago whereas the but you know the beauty of being in a theatre is you're all doing Christmas at the same time but it's amazing though and it's wonderful because you also conversely you have some perspective on it in the film you know you've stopped playing the character it's over it's finished you've washed it away and then when you come you know if you can bear it to watch the film you can go wow that's kind of that's what we did you know at Christmas time whatever it is this audience is not going to like to know Tom that we only have time for one more question so maybe somebody right at the back yes that right at the back you yes hang on a second sorry Tom you're an actor you have done several plays what is the motion for important into Europe in an after what advice would you give to someone who want to be an actor my goodness gosh I say so many things like he's gone forever I would say I would probably reduce it to something like this and I would quote Shakespeare because he's wiser than me and I've said it before probably but I believe that acting actors are in the business of truth and and holding the mirror up to nature so it's it's our job to represent humanity in all of its virtue and phal ability and frailty and honesty and complexity in contradiction I mean if human beings are so strange because they are so contradictory I've been reading this book about identity recently and I think that's just it's something I find interesting but that identity it's it's it gets inside what the meaning of identity is and if there is a yunus of you and a meanness of me and a madness of Matt like what is that and this talks about kind of the way the brain works and the possibility of souls and the fact that the brain has a muscle for constructing autobiography to give us a sense of a unity of character that I am Tom sitting before you now or is in fact I probably am lots of different people in this strange collection of molecules that's been around for 31 years and the interesting about acting is that you are using all your experience and all of your emotion and all of your thoughts and feelings to represent that human beings and the different colors of being alive and so I suppose my my my simple advices love your life I only say that because because your life is what you have to give like and sometimes if you have a good day or a bad day that day might be the thing that you need to call upon when you're playing a particular part you know there's no point in me saying this is a film about love if I haven't ever been in love before or or playing a son to a father if I don't have a father myself and and sometimes as an actor you're asked to do things you've never done you know you like and that's when you have to extend your imagination in your compassion towards the situation and say what would it be like if I was in that's it if I was in you know with Loki what would it be like if I had been adopted and lied to and betrayed and but I also had some kind of strange magical power you know and you know but children do it readily you know children play that game all the time so I finished with the Shakespeare which is which is sort of you know after love your life to vine own self be true and it must follow as night the day thou canst not then be false to any man top Tom spoke about Shakespeare being much wiser than he but I think we'll all agree that an era where Tom has a lot of wit and wisdom and delight so thank you so much for being with us [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Torrilla

Views: 239,624

Keywords: Tom Hiddleston, Hiddleston, Times Talks Madrid, Interview

Id: lD-E-ddTp8E

Length: 63min 56sec (3836 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 07 2013