Home > Author > Tom Hiddleston
21 " I feel as though the cardboard box of my own reality has been flattened and blown open. Now I can see the edge of the world. "
― Tom Hiddleston
22 " We pull on to the road, where our only company are the wandering cattle, who have become commonplace as traffic lights. Lethargic and listless, they look like they've been roaming the roads of Guinea since the dawn of time. And no doubt they will continue to long after we're gone. "
23 " Never stop. Never stop fighting. Never stop dreaming. And don't be afraid of wearing your heart on your sleeve - in declaring the films that you love, the films that you want to make, the life that you've had, and the lives you can help reflect in cinema. 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. "
24 " I think cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness. "
25 " Haters never win. I just think that's true about life, because negative energy always costs in the end. "
26 " The thing that keeps you grounded is doing the thing you love. "
27 " What was your first job title?Waiter. It was at a showy opera festival in a barn in Oxfordshire. I did it for a whole summer and people would be so extraordinarily rude that it made me decide that I would never be rude in my life, specifically to people who were kind enough to serve things. "
28 " I believe very strongly in kindness, in good manners, in treating people with equanimity and a sense of humour and all those things. "
29 " Doing good in this world, and being kind and being honest and noble is really underrated. And I think you have... I think everyday people have enormous power, and they have enormous power for good, and if you're good to people, the world is a better place. "
30 " There are a lot of people in this world who are afraid of caring or afraid of showing that they care, because it's uncool. It's uncool to have passion. It's so much easier to lose when you've shown everyone how much you don't care, whether you win or lose. It's much harder to lose when you show that you care. But you'll never win unless you also stand to lose. "
31 " It’s really fun when people recognize you in a passionate way. "
32 " I guess when you smile, it's just joy coming out of you. "
33 " When I’m given a role, the first thing I do is read the play over and over again. I scour the script and write down everything the character says about himself and everything that everyone else says about him. I immerse myself in my character and imagine what it might be like to be that person.When I played Cassio in Othello I imagined what it would be like to be a lieutenant in the Venetian navy in 1604. I sat down with Ewan McGregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor and together we decided that Othello, Iago and Cassio had soldiery in their bones.I took from the script that Cassio was talented and ambitious, with no emotional or physical guard - and that’s how I played the part.For me, acting is about recreating the circumstances that would make me feel how my character is feeling. In the dressing room, I practise recreating those circumstances in my head and I try to not get in the way of myself. For example, in act two of Othello, when Cassio is manipulated to fight Roderigo and loses his rank, some nights I would burst into tears; other nights I wouldn’t but I would still feel the same emotion, night after night. Just as in life, the way we respond to catastrophe or death will be different every time because the process is unconscious.By comparison, in Chekhov’s Ivanov I played the young doctor, Lvov. Lvov was described as “a prig and a bigot … uprightness in boots … tiresome … completely sincere”. His emotions were locked away. I worked around the key phrase: “Forgive me, I’m going to tell you plainly.”I practised speaking gravely and sincerely without emotion and I actually noticed how that carried over into my personal life: when I played the open-hearted Cassio, I felt really free; when I played the pent-up Lvov, I felt a real need to release myself from the shackles of that character.It’s exhilarating to act out the emotions of a character - it’s a bit like being a child again. You flex the same muscles that you did when you pretended to be a cowboy or a policeman: acting is a grown-up version of that with more subtlety and detail. You’re responding with real emotions to imaginary situations. When I’m in a production I never have a day when I haven’t laughed, cried or screamed. There are times when I wake up stiff from emotional exhaustion.Film is a much more intimate and thoughtful medium than theatre because of the proximity of the camera. The camera can read your thoughts. On stage, if you have a moment of vulnerability you can hide it from the other actors; on film, the camera will see you feel that emotion and try to suppress it. Similarly, if you’re pretending to feel something that isn’t there, it won’t be believable. "
34 " Make sure you tell the people you love that you love them. Loudly and often. You never know when it might be too late. "
35 " This generation has lost the true meaning of romance. There are so many songs that disrespect women. You can’t treat the woman you love as a piece of meat. You should treat your love like a princess. Give her love songs, something with real meaning. Maybe I’m old fashioned but to respect the woman you love should be a priority. " Wait a minute! I'm actually a Tom Hiddleston fan just putting it out there that this quote and others that you find around the internet are completely fake. Only believe quotes that are written in professional interviews, because I'm here right now to show you that anything can be made up easily by anyone, I could write anything I want here and you could think it's a real quote. So go to interviews or the verified twitter to see the real words someone has said - anything else can be made up! :) "
36 " It's taken me a white to get here, but in a way, it feels more pleasing, because I've had periods that haven't been so good, had so much work or had too many opportunities... or I missed out on them or something; for whatever reason, the train came into the station and passed me by or I was late for it or something. So I feel really proud, I suppose, that it's taken this long and I stuck at it. It's a very competitive business and very uncertain. I mean, you don't know what's around the corner. It could be everything, or it could be nothing. And I sort of stuck at it, and you keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you've climbed a mountain. "
37 " Well, the thing that I suppose is closest to my heart is Shakespeare. I really am a nerd about Shakespeare, I love it [laughs] and the reason why is because he’s one of the wisest, most compassionate writers in the course of Western literature, in the course of all literature. And he understood human nature so deeply, not just our great capacity for virtue and for goodness, and for love, but our capacity for pain and destruction and anger. "
38 " I’ve had to work hard for a lot of things in my life. I remember being told I probably wouldn’t get into Cambridge University because I wasn’t smart enough. So I had to pull my socks up and prove to whoever it was who said I couldn’t do it that I could do it, and then I did. "
39 " Love your life. "
40 " Loki'd! "