Tom Hiddleston covered the weekend edition of the Observer Magazine, the Guardian’s weekend magazine. Hiddles enjoys The Guardian, and he’s given some great interviews to the newspaper over the years. This time around, he’s promoting The Night Manager, which will be coming out in the UK next month (Americans have to wait until April). The Observer piece is written lightly, mostly because Hiddles is studiously uncontroversial and apolitical, so it’s not like he really wants to GO IN on arms dealing, the Arab Spring or any of the subjects dealt with in The Night Manager. You can read the full piece here. Some highlighs:
When told he has a titanic brain: “Which means it goes down. There are no survivors.”
He says he’s proud of I Saw the Light: “I mean, that sounds arrogant. I’m just proud to be in such a… It was so far away from me; it was really not my life experience at all.”
How he acts: “I suppose I’m fascinated by the private vulnerability and the exterior of people. I think that’s an essential truth. I sort of quite like trying to find what makes people tick behind the construction of their identity.”
How so many successful actors went to Eton: “There are so many successful actors who didn’t go there…Like Michael Fassbender and Daniel Craig and Domhnall Gleeson and Luke Evans and Gemma Arterton and Andrea Riseborough. There’s so many, the list goes on and on and on. Idris Elba.”
The debate about how the acting world has been overrun by posh private school guys: “It’s socially divisive in a way it shouldn’t be, because I think wherever you are from you should be able to follow your passion. Wherever you went to school, if you have something authentic to contribute, you should be allowed to. There is an acknowledged problem of access and inequality of opportunity – I don’t know how to remedy that. But yeah, I’m on everyone’s side; I’m on the side of the actors. I’m not there to divide the world into pieces.”
His childhood: “I think intermittently quiet and playful.”
Being sent to boarding school at a young age: “I mean, this is not exceptional. I was very vulnerable when I first went. I went to boarding school when I was seven and then I sort of learned how to deal with it. So I must have somehow got more independent through that experience. I don’t think it was… I’ve never sort of had analysis about this or anything, so I have no idea, but… You just kind of move on. It wasn’t damaging, but I’m sure it made me independent. It must have had some…” he drifts off. Later he’ll apologise for vagueness over the matter. He wants to be truthful, he says, but it’s “difficult, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s so hard to unpack.” He looks up plaintively. “Am I making any sense? Am I being extremely worthy and self-regarding? I hope not.”
His four-year-old niece: “I’m called ‘Uncle Yay Monster’ because when we run, she basically wants to run as fast as me but she can’t, so after a while I just pick her up and she screams: ‘Yay!’ It’s exhausting, but enormous fun.”
The videos of his dance moves: “God, it’s so embarrassing… It was a big public Q&A [in South Korea], there were 7,000 people there, and I was taking questions from the audience. Somebody asked: ‘Of what body part are you most proud?’ That’s just a wrong question, to which there are only wrong answers. So I said: ‘My feet’ and they said: ‘Why?’ and I said: ‘Without my feet, I couldn’t run and I couldn’t dance.’ And they said: ‘Well, now we have to see you dance.’ So I danced… And I created a monster. There we go.”
The Observer notes that Tom doesn’t really go in for self-analysis from a psychological standpoint, which you can see in his answer about being packed off to boarding school at the age of seven. It’s almost like he’s talking about someone else. I did love the part about his niece and Uncle Yay Monster, just because I bet he is a really lovely and loving uncle. The part about being posh and the acting world and all of that… I don’t know. I think it’s an important conversation for the British acting community to have and no one is saying posh blokes shouldn’t get into acting, but there should be an acknowledgement that posh actors are taking up more and more space in the British actor community, right?
PS… Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman were on Graham Norton promoting The Night Manager this weekend. I know Tom is off in Australia working, but part of me thinks that Norton isn’t eager to have Tom back after Tom brought out his overeager puppy routine last time.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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