“I think I started acting because I found being away at school while my parents were divorcing really distressing,” says the 31-year-old, “It’s only now I’ve got a retrospective angle on it. When you are a teenager, suddenly you start harbouring secrets in a different way. If you are at a boys’ school, especially, there is a level of bravado that you have to keep up otherwise you’ll get picked on. I was really quite upset, and probably very sad and vulnerable and angry. Acting presented a way of expelling those feelings in a safe place.” [X]

For myself, for a long time… maybe I felt inauthentic or something, I felt like my voice wasn’t worth hearing, and I think everyone’s voice is worth hearing. So if you’ve got something to say, say it from the rooftops.

“I was never the clown at school, I had some really rebellious classmates when I was at school. I’ve always been quite internally rebellious. I think everybody at school thought I was going to become a teacher; it was a massive misjudgment of my character. Which maybe reflects that I never played all my cards, I kept them close to my chest. I guess that is somehow like Loki in some way. There is a distance. He is watching everything all the time from a distance. I guess I’m a bit like that.” Tom Hiddleston

30 ACTORS I ADMIRE - Tom Hiddleston
Even outside of Marvel, whenever I am working on a film, I try to not think about what people will think about it once it’s made. It will make you self-conscious and self-aware. You just have to be thinking, “Who is this guy? What does he want? It’s my responsibility to play this guy and his version of the truth is my responsibility. What other people see in that representation is up to them.” I didn’t know that people were going to like what I did in Thor as Loki. It’s nice that they liked it. But it is that thing of “to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”