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Tom Hiddleston: A god among men?

Hollywood A-lister, ELLE writer, YouTube sensation – Tom Hiddleston’s cult status is evident on every platform. And, as ELLE’s Annabel Brog discovers, he’s not afraid of revealing, well, everything.​

When ELLE’s Editor-in-Chief Lorraine Candy was at Wimbledon last year, she rather naively tweeted afterwards: ‘I sat next to actor Tom Hiddleston and his girlfriend Jane. He’s a very funny man.’ She has never – bear in mind this is a mother of four who edits a fashion magazine, which puts her high on a certain demographic hit-list – been trolled like it. The responses veered between righteous fury that she had outed Hiddleston as being ‘With Girlfriend’, and rather bloodthirsty expressions of envy that she had, you know, talked to him.

Tom Hiddleston inspires fervour in his fans. He’s an extraordinary actor who has won universal acclaim – his roles include feckless Prince Hal in the BBC’s The Hollow Crown; sweet, doomed Captain Nicholls in Spielberg’s War Horse; and currently the blood-drenched warrior Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse – but it’s his performance as pallid, sociopathic god of mischief Loki in the Thor and Avengers Assemble films that catapulted him into the stratosphere. To put it in context: Hiddleston recently donated a pair of signed Converse to the Small Steps charity auction, alongside the likes of Mick Jagger and Kate Moss. His shoes sold for £4,500 (more than anyone else’s). He is very appreciative of the interest, while simultaneously being uncomfortable with the idea of fame. ‘Do I like it? It’s sort of inconsequential in a way, a weird corollary to everything else I’ve done. I cannot tell you how surprising it is. It’s like, really? REALLY? I honestly try not to think about it too much.’

We are nestled under a heater in the beer garden of a north-west London pub on a chilly December evening. Hiddleston is drinking whiskey, which is part of my cunning strategy to break him down – he has always given me the impression of being very prepared in interviews – but it doesn’t work. After five shots, he remains entirely in control.

Nonetheless, he is rather adorable: ferociously bright (he went to Eton, then Cambridge, where he got a double first), earnest (‘I know. I’m sorry. I can’t help it’), obliging, and old-fashioned. Partly that’s his classical- ly handsome face, partly it’s his impeccable manners, and partly it’s the way he constructs his sentences.

Describing his favourite book, William Boyd’s Any Human Heart, for instance, he says, ‘Like all life, it contains multitudes’; or, on opening up to new people, ‘I fear I am initially quite private.’ When he is sure of his subject – talking about work, family, culture – he is eloquent and assertive. When he is less certain – typically on the subject of himself – his voice rises slightly in inadvertent questions: ‘I’m solitary [but] I don’t think that’s a good thing, I think I’m better in company?’ Or: ‘I know that there’s this thinking capacity, which is possibly not a good thing?’

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This interview first appeared in the March 2014 issue of ELLE UK

Such a great read… but why oh why do I have to remember this as that time when Tom Hiddleston was made aware of “Trousergate”? Jeez…