Tom Hiddleston Quotes

What's my guilty pleasure? The thing is, I never feel guilty about pleasures.

The most interesting thing about being alive is that there is no black and white; there are many shades of gray.

The Night Manager doesn't exist in the post-Cold war universe, it exists much more in the modern world, I think. There is more action. The bad guys don't have particularly political or national-political affiliations.

I think everyone should pursue their dreams. Whether you want to play football, act, sing, become a writer or whatever you have burning inside you as you're growing up, you should pursue it.

What is the best use of my time on this planet?

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.

TRUE LOVE IS AN ACCEPTANCE OF SOMEONE ELSE FOR WHO THEY ARE.

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.

the skys the limit, your sky, your limit

Never, ever, let anyone tell you what you can and can't do. Prove the cynics wrong. Pity them for they have no imagination. The sky's the limit. Your sky. Your limit. Now. Let's dance.

I think we all see ourselves as the heroes in our own lives.

The learning is the heavy lifting. You need to get the words into your brain.

I did a production of 'Journey's End,' an RC Sherriff play about World War I, at the Edinburgh Festival. I was 18 and it was the first time that people I knew and loved and respected came up to me after the show and said, 'You know, you could really do this if you wanted to.'

I gave myself permission to care, because there are a lot of people in this world who are afraid of caring, who are afraid of showing 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 if 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. I've said it before. Don't be afraid of your passion, give it free reign, and be honest and work hard and it will all turn out just fine.

To have compassion for a character is no different from having compassion for another human being.

I don't want to name names because I don't want to draw too many direct comparisons but the history of Fascism is populated by people who need to subjugate other people and elevate their status and power to a level which is supreme. Usually, any psychological study of those people will reveal a sort of lost, damaged child, who is somehow heartbroken and doesn't have any self-worth.

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.

As an actor, it's much, much easier to be really nasty to someone that you really like.

I love the acting community at Cambridge. It's really quite committed and serious, since the days of Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen right through to Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie.

Whenever I come back to London, which is home, I get that cosy, comfortable feeling of being home, as well as the sophistication of this city.

Life is generally pretty damn amazing if you let it be.

Chris Hemsworth is like Christopher Reeve in that he can do two things: he can wear a big red cape without a shred of self-consciousness. But he's also funny as hell, and he's so sweet. So with all the fish-out-of-water stuff, he's so funny. So he does almost two jobs in a way.

You never know what's around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you've climbed a mountain.

My favourite pudding is a toss-up between cheesecake - proper, New York cheesecake - and apple crumble and custard. Custard is very important, or dark chocolate mousse. Tea: probably Earl Grey, splash of milk.

America and Europe are so different in the way they conceive of themselves and art and cinema.

Well, I think there are no villains in this world. There are just misunderstood heroes.

If the Loki in 'Thor' was about a spiritual confusion - 'Who am I? How do I belong in this world?' - the Loki in 'Avengers' is, 'I know exactly who I am, and I'm going to make this world belong to me.'

Without revealing too much, there's a specific skill set you need to be in Loki's army - let me know if you have the qualifications.

I always wanted to see what America was like. I had that curiosity in my 20s when I was working in the theatre here [ in London] ... there was the mystery of LA and I wondered what happened over there. I wanted to go and check it out and I'm pleased that I have.

Stay hungry, stay young, stay foolish, stay curious, and above all, stay humble because just when you think you got all the answers, is the moment when some bitter twist of fate in the universe will remind you that you very much don't.

I always found the extraordinary loss of life in the First World War very moving. I remember learning about it as a very young child, as an eight- or nine-year-old, asking my teachers what poppies were for. Every year the teachers would suddenly wear these red paper flowers in their lapels, and I would say 'What does that mean?'

When people don't like themselves very much, they have to make up for it. The classic bully was actually a victim first.

Love your life. Because your life is what you have to give.

I am no saviour. I'm absolutely the last person on the planet who can practically help. I don't know how to make the different types of therapeutic feeding milk. I'm no chemist. I'm no doctor. I'm no engineer. I can't manufacture polio vaccines or organise their transportation to the health centres in Saramoussayah or Bissikirima. I can't build schools, or design drainage systems. I can't provide the women and children of Mandiana with water.All I can do now is help make people aware of what is happening, of what they are doing. That is all that I can do. For now.

I always thought of running as just dancing forward.

Never stop. Never stop fighting. Never stop dreaming.

[On Love After Love by Derek Walcott]
I read this poem often, once a month at least. In the madness and mayhem of modern life, where every man seems committed to an endless search for the approval and esteem of his fellows and peers, no matter what the cost, this poem reminds me of a basic truth: that we are, as we are, "enough". Most of us are motivated deep down by a sense of insufficiency, a need to be better stronger, faster; to work harder; to be more committed, more kind, more self-sufficient, more successful. But this short poem by Derek Walcott is like a declaration of unconditional love. It's like the embrace of an old friend. He brings us to an awareness of the present moment, calm and peaceful, and to a feeling of gratitude for everything we have. I have read it to my dearest friends after dinner once, and to my family at Christmas, and they started crying, which always, unfailingly, makes me cry.

I think when the world makes you feel rejected, you bite back.

I think everyone should do what they love because it will never feel like work that way.

It was quite a European war until 1917, when the Americans joined up. They don't have the same sense of the loss of innocence and the cataclysmic loss of life. A whole generation was wiped out.

I am desperate to do a comedy now.

Don't be afraid of your passion. Like, just give it free rein. And be honest, and work hard. And it'll all turn out just fine.

The best comedy is always played straight down the middle.

Make sure you tell the people you love that you love them. Loudly and often. You never know when it might be too late.

Fame is weird and amorphous and unpredictable.

Acting takes a degree of mutual trust and respect.

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.

The thing that keeps you grounded is doing the thing you love.

Acting is a bit like tennis in that you can't really do it on your own.

In 'Thor,' that was my own hair. I grew it out. But I have naturally curly, blonde hair, so I'll never look like that. By the time I got to 'The Avengers,' I had come off two other films, which required me to have it very short. So I dyed it again and it was long enough to use a part of my hairline.

Everybody is great and the chemistry is different with everyone. That is the joy of acting - you really don't know how it is going to go until you turn up. It's like playing tennis, you can't plan for the match you are going to play until you are actually up against your opponent and what happens, happens. That is the joy of being on set.

I am an optimist ... I choose to be. There is a lot of darkness in our world, there is a lot of pain and you can choose to see that or you can choose to see the joy. If you try to respond positively to the world, you will spend your time better.

I definitely go through periods where I'm in a particular mood, or there's a consistent imaginative context that I feel I'm in, and I'm drawn to certain things. I can sometimes feel it when I'm moving away from something that I was once interested in - an idea or an exploration of particular relationships. I go, 'Well, I think I've done that and I don't want to do it again.'

I guess when you smile, it's just joy coming out of you.

Maybe it's just getting older. You become so palpably aware this is not a dress rehearsal. There's a big sign in blazing neon that says You Haven't Got Long. But I think it takes a beat to learn that. Life has to knock you down in order for you to realise it, because when you're a kid you think you're immortal.

I have been allowed to inhabit different shades of human nature and different colours of truth indifferent circumstances.

Thor and Loki are defined by each other.

I would always play the baddie, incidentally.

[On his success] It's mad and bananas and amazing, but I can handle it for the simple reason that it genuinely feels like it's not real. You know when you go to a fancy dress party and everyone looks incredible and there are crazy things hanging from the ceiling? For about five hours or so, you enter into another world and then, when you come out of it, you are sitting at home with a cup of tea and a biscuit and you're thinking to yourself, "Well, that was weird. Fun, but weird." That's exactly what it feels like… Truly, everything that has happened to me has been beyond any reasonable expectations that I may have had.

I think cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness.

Some of the greatest actors have turned superheroes into a serious business: Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in 'Batman'; Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, the first venerable knights of the X-Men, who have now passed the baton to Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy.

Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama; fathers and sons, martyred heroes, star-crossed lovers, the deaths of kings - stories that taught us of the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility.

Before I start a film or a play, I try to build a world in my mind. An imaginative world which the character lives in; and I create that with novels, with painting, with music, with films. I try and understand tone. Tone is so important. Is this a thriller, is this a Gothic romance, is this an action film, is this a love story? Then, once I understand that, I just jump into it. This might be like an incomplete way of describing it, but it's like I build a swimming pool, then I just dive in. Do you know what I mean?

In the end, you will always kneel.

I fundamentally believe that in the moral balance of the human race, we right ourselves. If we feel like the ship's keel is off, we find a way to steer ourselves through the storm repeatedly.

Don't judge people on who they used to be. Allow them to be who they are now.

Since my education, I've done quite untraditional things. There are very few Etonians who went to Rada. And far fewer Etonians - certainly when I was there - went to Cambridge. I don't know whether it's the same now. Most people I knew went to Oxford, because it seemed more of an easy bridge.

Just because you're good in something doesn't mean you'll necessarily be good in something else. You just try and chase opportunities that you fall in love with or that inspire you and keep doing the work.

We're travelling through space and time, we're dealing with gods and monsters, but at the heart of the film, from my perspective, is a family - a father, two sons, two brothers, a mother and the fractious, intimate interaction that they have.

The language of digital communication is a language we don't understand in a way. People say the internet is like the Wild West in that it's lawless and we haven't worked out how to make it structured or moral.

I'm an eternal realist and the success rate for being an actor is pretty low.

When I fall in love with someone, then that doesn't "just" happen… When I love someone's character, over time I'll see that personality, I love so much, shining through their eyes and fusing with their appearance, turning them in the most beautiful girl in the world. It's not about appearance, it's about someone's beautiful, amazing, wonderful, fantastic personality, you'll see every time you look at her. It's about the fact that when you look in her eyes, you just feel home… You forget all your problems, all your fears, you just feel safe, you feel like you've finally found a place where you belong… A place you can spend an eternity, where you will spend an eternity, cause those enchanting, beautiful eyes will slow down time and make every second; looking in her beautiful eyes, right into her amazing personality, last more than a lifetime.
It's about the fact that the whole world, the whole universe just looks so much more beautiful!! All of a sudden everything looks different and your heart will just start smiling. That's what love is all about… the moment someone you only "liked" before, changes into the most aesthetically pleasing girl in the world. The moment you realize how blind you've been all those days, how you were living in a fake universe, never knowing that the only thing your life is all about, the only thing that keeps you smiling, was all the time right next to you.

We're all flawed heroes. Responsibility is power. Take responsibility for the consequences of your actions, and the world is yours. Everything is a choice.

I'd love to see T'he Avengers' with Robert Downey, Jr. playing Loki and Clark Gregg playing 'Thor' and I play Captain America.

Never Stop Dreaming

I don't want to be quoted as 'Tom Hiddleston, psychologist says ... ' But there is a psychological aspect to being an actor. We are particular students of human nature - not every actor is, of course, but that's what fascinates me about being an actor.

Showing young children in these communities, that there are outlets for their feelings, that there is room in a space for their stories to be told, and that they will be applauded - and it's not about ego, it's about connection: that their pain is everybody else's pain.

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.

You look at the greatest villains in human history, the fascists, the autocrats, they all wanted people to kneel before them because they don't love themselves enough.

Don't be afraid of wearing your heart on your sleeve. For myself, for a long time - maybe I felt inauthentic or something. I felt like my voice wasn't worth hearing. I think everyone's voice is worth hearing. So if you've got something to say... say it from the rooftops! That's what I would say.

When you're starting out as an actor people are very interested in who you are because they want to know where they can put you. And quite often, and we're all guilty of this is our lives, we judge very quickly and we pigeon-hole people very quickly based on how they look and how they talk and how they dress and we think: "Oh yeah, we know who you are."

Somehow the past is a safe place to explore our collective cultural neuroses.

Tony Stark in 'Iron Man' helped wider audiences finally embrace the enormous talent of Robert Downey Jr.

Actors in any capacity, artists of any stripe, are inspired by their curiosity, by their desire to explore all quarters of life, in light and in dark, and reflect what they find in their work. Artists instinctively want to reflect humanity, their own and each other's, in all its intermittent virtue and vitality, frailty and fallibility.

We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize that we only have one.

One of the great flaws that we all share is that we think everyone else is cooler, everyone else is sexier; everyone else has all the answers. That was me too.

My father and I used to tussle about me becoming an actor. He's from strong, Presbyterian Scottish working-class stock, and he used to sit me down and say, 'You know, 99 percent of actors are out of work. You've been educated, so why do you want to spend your life pretending to be someone else when you could be your own man?'

The dream is to keep surprising yourself, never mind the audience

It's in our nature to want to watch our human frailties played out on a huge, epic canvas. Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama: fathers and sons, star-crossed lovers, warring brothers, martyred heroes. Tales that taught us the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility. It's the everyday stuff of everyman's life, but it's writ large, and we love it.

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:

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.

I try not to make plans. God always laughs at your plans. I'm going to keep the door open, and keep the page blank, and see what gets painted upon it.

I have a little office in my house and it is an absolute pigsty but I know exactly where everything is and there are little things stuck all over the walls, and papers in in-trays and files I have saved on my computer and playlists I have made on my iTunes - things that take me to a place that I think is appropriate,

There's an Iago and a Romeo within all of us. There is that lover, and there is that sociopath.

At Christmas, individuals are apportioned their roles in the family script - you're either the funny one or the sensitive one; or you either do the cooking or the washing up. And those roles aren't easy to change.

Haters never win. I just think that's true about life, because negative energy always costs in the end.

Loki in 'Thor' is the most incredible springboard into a sort of excavation of the darker aspects of human nature. So that was thrilling, coming back knowing that I'd built the boat and now I could set sail into choppier waters.

I love playing all kinds of roles. I hope it doesn't sound too pretentious, but I always feel human nature is like a piano, and there are 88 keys, and there are some white keys and some black keys, and each character is a different chord on the piano. Basically, I hope that in the course of my life, I will have played all 88 keys. So, I'll have played heroes and villains and princes and kings and warriors and beggars and thieves and lovers and fathers and wizards and all of those things. That is why I'm an actor ... I love studying people.

I never get afraid of things, I only get excited.

It's like playing tennis, you play a different rally with different people. Every actor is different and the chemistry between actors is different.