Hiddleston Talks Shakespeare, THOR & AVENGERS

Film superstar and dedicated thespian Tom Hiddleston discusses his integral role in the forthcoming four-film Shakespeare series premiering on PBS later this Fall, dubbed THE HOLLOW CROWN, as well as his AVENGERS and THOR roles, as part of a new interview.

Hiddleston first remarks upon his first experience with the Bard, relating, "My first Shakespearean production I ever saw, I was 13 years old. It was the RSC, A Midsummer Night's Dream. I thought some bits were funny but, to be honest, a lot of it went over my head, and it was really being taken to see Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing and sort of being dragged, kicking and screaming because it wasn't an action film and then go, "'Oh. Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves are in this. Oh. This is hilarious and I understand everything and it's great.'"

He adds of his affection for Baz Luhrmann's wildly imaginative re-telling of Romeo & Juliet, "I was 15 when Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet came out so it's as if he made that film for me. The soundtrack to that film was my soundtrack. Romeo or Juliet, I can't remember which character, one of them is actually supposed to be 15 and it seemed so romantic and so true."

Also, Hiddleston comments on the ultimate legacy - and his heavy helping of fans thanks to two superhero franchises - that he hopes to have as a performer, as well as who he wishes to emulate career-wise. "I really want to stay an actor and it's wonderful to have success like The Avengers. It's honestly one of the great unprecedented strange accidents of my life. I was cast in Thor and Avengers with some idea in Kevin Feige's head and then it became the biggest thing I've ever done without question, and on a level that's actually difficult to process," he says.

Hiddleston shares, "But the actors I respected are the ones who just keep acting through thick and thin. It's John Hurt. It's Ian McKellen. It's Anthony Hopkins. They're still going, so whatever moments of flourishing that I pass through, it's all temporary. And the thing that keeps you grounded is doing the thing you love. And actually I was cast as Prince Hal before I shot The Avengers. It was around the time that Thor was coming out, and it was so odd because I had five films in the can and none of them had come out and I knew I was making Avengers and I wasn't being strategic and I didn't know how any of those films were going to play...those films were Thor, War Horse, Midnight in Paris, The Deep Blue Sea and Archipelago. And by the time I got around to playing Prince Hal, half of those films had been seen by the world and so my position, I suppose, is a bit different but, anyway, it was never a kind of big conscious thing."

Check out the original article on the matter here.

THE HOLLOW CROWN airs September 20 on PBS.