Interview with Tom Hiddleston

 

Tom Hiddleston may be best known to you for his role in the blockbuster ‘Thor’, where he played baddie Loki. His forthcoming releases include reprising the role of Loki to be the centre of the new film ‘The Avengers’ and as Captain Nichols in Steven Spielberg’s much anticipated ‘Warhorse’ . His career has also included starring opposite Kenneth Brannagh as a series regular on Wallander. Now Tom has worked with movie legend Woody Allen in the new film ‘Midnight in Paris’ in which Tom plays the famous American author F Scott Fitzgerald

 Midnight in Paris is a romantic comedy/fantasy both written and directed by Woody Allen and sees a return to the charisma of  his classic movies like Annie Hall. Tom told us how he found out he would be working with Woody Allen

“He is amazing, I was in Los Angeles finishing up filming Thor, I didn’t even meet him. I didn’t have to audition, it’s the first time in my life that I didn’t have to audition or meet a director before getting a job. I was sitting in my rented house in Venice Beach and a letter arrived via courier and on the top of this letter it simply said Woody Allen on headed paper and it said ‘Dear Tom I’m shooting a movie in Paris in the summer and I have enclosed some pages and Id love you to take a look at the role of Scott and let me know what you think and I hope Ill see you there.’

And then I looked at the pages and realised the character of Scott was interacting with a character called Zelda and a character called Bernard and after about 5 minutes I realised the Woody Allen was asking me to play F Scott Fitzgerald.”

On the realisation of playing a real person, never mind one of the greatest American Writers of the 20th Century, did he approach the part differently?

“Certainly there’s a integrity that you need to adhere too. There are so many enthusiasts in the world .. and there’ll be Fitzgerald fans out there.. I do feel a responsibility to try and get as close as I can to a representation to who this man might have been..I felt as though for 3 weeks in Paris I lived in Fitzgerald’s shoes and seems like he had a good time.”

Midnight In Paris is a fantasy film set in the romance of 1920’s Paris, Tom explained the plot further,

“Owen Wilson plays this contempary Hollywood screen writer, he’s a self confessed hack, he doesn’t like his own work and he writes screen plays for movies and he wishes that as a younger man had gone to live in  Paris to write the great American novel. He’s in love with that whole golden age of American literature when Hemmingway and Fitzgerald were living in Paris with Picasso and Gertrude stein and all these people swimming around in the same place…at midnight he.. sits on some steps underneath the clock tower, there’s no delorian, there’s no hot tub time machine but a very old car just sidles up the street and in he gets and he gets he goes back in time to his dream world to the world he wished he lived in which, is Paris of the 1920’s, with all these iconic figures dancing around together. I guess its his (Woody ) way of saying I don’t need any kind of lightening bolt I don’t need any special effects I’m just going to have this old car sidle up and you’re going to come with me.”

Working with Woody Allen must always be a privilege but Tom mentions he did not get much chance to get to know him like he did his fellow cast members,

“Woody Allen, as a man is very private, famously so I think and he’s such a brilliant and efficient and quick director but he’s not enormously social with his cast… we were shooting there at the time the football world cup was in the quarter final and Semis stage so Corey Stoll (Hemmingway) and Owen Wilson and myself as soon as we wrapped every day we ran to the nearest café to watch …we were just watching football like the rest of the world….The Dutch in the last world cup were pretty rough in terms of the way they played aggressively they were putting in these flying tackles and there were boots going in at neck and chest level one of my most hilarious moments was Owen Wilson going off on a diatribe (doing the best Owen Wilson impression)  ‘oh my god did you see how high that went..is that how you play in Europe!’”

Still stunned by Tom’s uncanny Owen Wilson impression the interview comes to an end as our time with Tom’s is sadly up. This guy is hot property and is set to only get hotter. Midnight in Paris is out on general release now!

www.midnightinparisfilm.com

(c) Ingrid Grenar and Ian Wright

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