Background and career
Thomas William Hiddleston (born 9 February 1981) is a British actor. His accolades include a Golden Globe Award as well as two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Hiddleston started his film career with Joanna Hogg's Unrelated (2007) and Archipelago (2010). In 2011, Hiddleston portrayed F. Scott Fitzgerald in Woody Allen's romantic comedy Midnight in Paris, appeared in Steven Spielberg's War Horse, and was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award. That year, he archieved global stardom portraying Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) superhero film Thor, and reprised the role in six subsequent films, as well as the Disney+ series Loki (2021–2023). He continued working with auteurs in independent films, including Terence Davies's drama The Deep Blue Sea (2012), Jim Jarmusch's vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) and Guillermo del Toro's horror film Crimson Peak (2015). He also played the troubled country music singer Hank Williams in the biopic I Saw The Light (2015) and led the big-budget adventure Kong: Skull Island (2017). On television, Hiddleston is starring in and executive producing the BBC One series The Night Manager (2016–2026), for which he received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. Hiddleston made his stage debut in Journey's End in 1999. He continued acting in theatre, including in the West End productions of Cymbeline (2007) and Ivanov (2008). He won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Newcomer in a Play for his role in Cymbeline and was nominated for the same award for his role as Cassio in Othello (2008). Hiddleston starred as the title character in a production of Coriolanus (2013–2014), receiving a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor. He made his Broadway debut in a 2019 revival of Harold Pinter's drama Betrayal, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. He starred in The Life of Chuck, an adaptation of Stephen King's novella of the same name.
Thomas William Hiddleston was born on 9 February 1981 in the Westminster district of London to Diana Patricia (née Servaes) Hiddleston, an arts administrator and former stage manager from Suffolk in east England, and Dr. James Norman Hiddleston, from Greenock in Renfrewshire in the west of Scotland, a physical chemist and former managing director of a biotechnology company that liaised with Oxford University. Hiddleston has an older sister, Sarah Alexandra Hiddleston, who works as a journalist in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, and a younger sister, Emma Elizabeth (née Hiddleston) Blakiston-Houston, who is an actress and midwife. On his mother's side, Hiddleston is a great-grandson of Vice-Admiral Reginald Servaes and a great-great-grandson of food producer Edmund Vestey, 1st Baronet. Through Vestey, Hiddleston is a distant cousin of Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who is a great-grandson of Edmund Vestey. Hiddleston's paternal grandfather, Alexander, served in the Royal Artillery and worked as a plater in the shipyards. He shares the same name as his great-great-uncle, Tom Hiddleston, a shipyard plater from Greenock and a member of the Royal Artillery's 51st (Highland) Division, who died after the Battle of the Somme and whose name is engraved in the Broomhill war memorial. Hiddleston was raised in Wimbledon, London in his early years, and later moved to a village near Oxford. He was privately educated at Windlesham House School from age seven, moving to the Dragon School in Oxford a year later and subsequently to Eton College. His parents divorced when he was twelve. At age thirteen, Hiddleston started boarding at Eton College. He subsequently studied Classics at the University of Cambridge where he was an undergraduate student at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and was awarded a double first honours degree. Mary Beard was one of his supervisors.[1] During his second term at Cambridge, he was seen in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire by talent agent Lorraine Hamilton of Hamilton Hodell. In 2005, he graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in acting.
While still doing student plays, Hiddleston began appearing on television, landing parts in Stephen Whittaker's adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby (2001) for ITV, the BBC/HBO co-production Conspiracy (2001), and as Randolph Churchill, the son of Winston Churchill, in the BBC/HBO drama The Gathering Storm (2002). Upon graduating from RADA, Hiddleston was cast in his first film role, playing Oakley in Joanna Hogg's first feature film, Unrelated (2006). His sister Emma also appeared in the film as Badge. Casting director Lucy Bevan, who cast him in the film, said "there was just a fantastic confidence about him". Hiddleston had leading roles in Declan Donnellan's company Cheek by Jowl's productions of Thomas Middleton's The Changeling (2006) and Shakespeare's Cymbeline (2007). For the latter he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Newcomer in a Play. His Donmar Warehouse credits include Cassio in Michael Grandage's production of Othello (2008) alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ewan McGregor. He also played Lvov in the West End revival of Chekhov's Ivanov (2008) with Kenneth Branagh. Hiddleston voiced Charles Darwin in BBC's documentary Galápagos in 2006. He narrated the audiobook The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner in 2007. Hiddleston played the leading role of Edward in Hogg's second feature, Archipelago (2010). Martin Scorsese spoke about his experience watching Archipelago: "I couldn't stop watching it... I fell in love with it". Hiddleston's TV credits include Magnus Martinsson in the BBC detective drama Wallander (2008), Bill Hazledine in Suburban Shootout (2006), John Plumptre in the BBC costume drama TV film Miss Austen Regrets (2008), and William Buxton in the BBC drama series Return to Cranford (2009). In 2007, he joined a list of British actors, including Kate Winslet and Orlando Bloom, to have guest starred in the long-running medical drama Casualty.
Hiddleston is well known for his portrayal of Loki in the 2011 Marvel Studios film Thor. He was invited to audition by Kenneth Branagh, the film's director, after having previously worked with Branagh on Ivanov and Wallander. Hiddleston said of Branagh, "Ken has had a life-changing effect. He was able to say to the executives, 'Trust me on this, you can cast Tom and he will deliver'. It was massive and it's completely changed the course of what is available to me to do. Ken gave me my break." He originally auditioned for the role of Thor, recalling, "That was what I was being considered for, because I'm tall and blonde and classically trained, and that seemed to be the mold for what Thor was, he was to be a classical character. And it was in my auditions. I owe this entirely to Marvel and their open-mindedness, they saw something that they thought was interesting. They saw some temperament that they liked." Hiddleston was given six weeks to bulk up, so he went on a strict diet and gained twenty pounds of muscle. Branagh ultimately decided he was more suitable as the antagonist and cast him as Loki. Empire magazine ranked Hiddleston's portrayal of Loki as the 19th Greatest Movie Character of All Time.
In November 2010, Hiddleston appeared with Benedict Cumberbatch, Gemma Arterton, Eddie Redmayne and Rose Byrne among others in Danny Boyle's production of The Children's Monologues, in which he played Prudence, a young girl upset with her mother for her father leaving and excited for her birthday. The play was a one time event of adapted stories of children's first-hand experiences in South Africa being re-interpreted by and performed by various actors. In 2011, Hiddleston portrayed novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris and the noble Captain Nicholls in Steven Spielberg's War Horse, based on the 1982 novel by Michael Morpurgo. The same year he starred as Freddie Page, a RAF pilot in the drama The Deep Blue Sea, alongside Rachel Weisz. In 2012, he reprised his role as Loki in The Avengers. Hiddleston provided the voiceover the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead in 2011 and poetry for iF Poems and The Love Book on iTunes in 2012. On television in 2012, Hiddleston appeared in the BBC Two series The Hollow Crown, portraying Prince Hal opposite Jeremy Irons as Henry IV in the adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I and Part II. He later appeared as King Henry V in the television film Henry V. In 2013, Hiddleston played Loki again in Thor: The Dark World, after which he played a vampire in Jim Jarmusch's film Only Lovers Left Alive with Tilda Swinton and Mia Wasikowska. From December 2013 to February 2014, Hiddleston played the title character in Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden directed by Josie Rourke. It was also aired live internationally on 30 January 2014. David Benedict of Variety praised a "scorching" performance. He had a cameo in the 2014 film Muppets Most Wanted, as the Great Escapo.
Hiddleston replaced Benedict Cumberbatch in Guillermo del Toro's gothic horror film Crimson Peak. The film started filming in Toronto in February 2014, and was released in October 2015. He starred as Robert Laing in Ben Wheatley's High-Rise (2015), based on J. G. Ballard's novel of the same name. In January 2014, Hiddleston became a spokesperson for Jaguar Cars in their "Good to be Bad" ad campaign featuring British actors in villain-themed commercials to promote Jaguar's new models. The first commercial of the campaign, titled "Rendezvous", first aired during the 2014 Super Bowl and featured Hiddleston along with Mark Strong and Ben Kingsley. Hiddleston starred in another commercial in the campaign, titled "The Art of Villainy" in April of the same year. It was released on YouTube, promoting the F-Type coupe. It was announced in June 2014 that Hiddleston would portray country music singer Hank Williams in the 2015 biopic I Saw the Light, based on the 1994 biography. The film was directed by Marc Abraham, and was first shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Hiddleston spent nearly five weeks preparing for the role of Williams, performing seven of the film's soundtrack songs. The film was released on 25 March 2016, by Sony Pictures Classics. While the film was not well-received, Hiddleston's performance was widely praised by critics. Stephanie Zacharek of Time magazine called him "magnificent" adding that "he honors Williams' greatness but also wriggles beyond it."
