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.

I've never done a film with a stunt department working at that capacity and doing wire work and action sequences with just a thrill.

I remember just being awake and alive every day of that job.

Mhm 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 number two, It was made in the summer of the year 2000, I was still studying as an undergraduate at uh the University of Cambridge and it was in my summer break.

Yeah, I must have been 19 and I had four days work and Lord too 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 p.

m.

in this said master shot the direction was OK, 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.

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 out and 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.

I thought, oh my God, oh my God!

And nobody had told me so.

I spent the entire day having to eat exactly as much as that.

Even in the first take and learned 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.

I'd always acted for fun.

It was my hobby as a schoolboy and a student.

I was very, very nervous and 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.

Mm hmm And your death came by the son of Odin Thor I spent 2008 by Sheer coincidence working as an actor alongside Kenneth Browner.

We did a television series for the BBC called Wallander.

And then after that I had done by again, by 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 Kenneth Brown announced that he was going to direct thor And I remember running up in his dressing room and I had an empty water cooler in my hand.

And I, I said it was a sort of way of congratulating I was pretending it was thaws hammer.

It was completely absurd.

And 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 Randi Hiller and Sarah Finn, who to whom I am forever indebted called me in because I was six ft two and had blond hair And um there were all sorts of roles in this that I might be right for.

And remember it's 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 low key 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 reading scenes together and laughing and, 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 in the garden for firewood, we're lifting these tree trunks.

And it was summertime, we went for a swim.

And 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 in the world.

And we became fast, firm and fast friends.

And it was the beginning of a long, extraordinary adventure in the world of marvel and Asgard and the, the you you were an innocent child.

You took me for a purpose.

What was it?

Tell me?

Mr 30 Guineas isn't nearly enough to purchase a horse as fine as your Joey.

I know that that's all I got.

Will you release him to me?

Albert to be my own mouth.

War horse was the most unlikely scenario in my recollection and it 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 it was in the middle of making thorne.

I was invited to put myself on tape and send an audition and I thought, well there's no way I'm possibly gonna get this because it's steven Spielberg and he's one of the great, greatest filmmakers alive and working today and kind of the architect of my childhood imagination and it just seems so impossible and unlikely.

And I got a telephone call informing me that steven Spielberg would like to meet me at first.

I thought it was some sort of prank, but nevertheless it was, it was real.

And so I drove over to his office is at Amblin and 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?

Uh He said, yeah, if you'd like to do, I'd love you to do it.

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 as noble and peaceful and intelligent as those horses.

And when we did that cavalry charge, Good luck, my friends, 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 four by four and galloping at full tilt chasing the camera while 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 machine guns on the other side.

It was a yeah, it was a completely unforgettable day.

And Spielberg gave me the most extraordinary note which for that he said, the camera's 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've 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 a camera settles, how old are you tom?

I said, I'm 29.

He's okay When I say action, I want you to 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 director direction I'd ever received.

Really.

It was 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, A kind of breathtaking in its staring and in its vision.

The experience of making it was 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 was some very exciting days on set when everybody was together and I thought, Wow, look at these actors in these costumes and there's 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 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 Ironman to chris Hemsworth to like coming straight off the back of thought and feeling really confident about maybe both of us, feeling more confident about who thor and Loki were.

And I remember that when it came out and seeing it for the first time and and thinking this is so fun and it's 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 it is screening in new york and people just cheered spontaneously and I remember thinking, phew, okay, okay, it works.

And then also cheering when I got hulk smash, which is very satisfying and I will not be bullied by Yeah.

Mhm.

Yeah.

Uh huh.

Do I thought you might need some help?

How did you get here?

It walks you walk.

Who's 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 or 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 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 realized the importance of how they turned out they are pristine the way the way the uniform is pressed and prepared and the tires 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 remember at night people would come up to me behind the desk and I would give them their keys and stuff and there was absolutely not recognized.

It was only In the morning at dawn around 7:00 people start to come down for breakfast and then hand in the hotel keys and say thank you so much.

And it's been, it's been such a lovely stay and do a kind of are you Anyway, it's been very nice, thank you so much, thank you.

It's been very nice to to stay here.

You look very familiar.

I'm sure I'm sure I do well anyway thanks.

It was kind of a kind of double taking and then a very a funny thing happened when we were filming The Night Manager in 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 towards the end of the evening at about 11:00 PMclock I guess.

Some real guests came back from having had a nice dinner and 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 light and they came into the lobby and said Yes room 303 Please.

And I said absolutely, so be er gave them their key and they went up and it was all in camera and with 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 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, it was a 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 they said, would you like to take this to broadway?

And I had never done theater in new york.

And to be invited to perform this very brilliant play on broadway right in the heart of the community on 45th Street at the Jacobs was a huge honor and 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 it goes out into the world and it echoes around the audience and the readers and the fans 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 low key means to people continues to deepen and change.

And that's 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, the comics, in the old stories and there's just so much in there and he has so many different facets.

And one of the things I think I found most interesting about Loki, he's a shapeshifter, 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?