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The Blockbuster Issue

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The BLOCKBUSTER Issue

PEOPLE Hiddleston made a

PEOPLE Hiddleston made a surprise appearance in character at San Diego’s Comic-Con convention – an annual site of pilgrimage for hardcore fans of comic book and superhero movies – it was reported that some of the crowd literally knelt in worship. “I never expected fame,” he considers. “It’s weird and amorphous and unpredictable. All acting is for an audience, it’s just that my audience is now…quite large.” Yet the director of Thor warned him it was coming. “At the end of shooting that film, Kenneth Branagh took Chris Hemsworth [who plays Thor] and myself aside and said, ‘In 12 months, boys, prepare yourselves!’” Playing Loki might have brought him unprecedented fame and, no doubt, riches, but what’s interesting about Hiddleston is that he keeps returning to his first love – Shakespeare – and continues to make bold film choices. In 2008 he won a Laurence Olivier award for Best Newcomer for a role in Cymbeline while also being nominated for the same award for a role in Othello. He played Henry V for the BBC in 2012, and in late 2013 and 2014 he enjoyed an acclaimed stint as the title character in Coriolanus in London’s West End. In cinema, he keeps bettering and challenging himself. This year he’ll be seen as the lead role in High-Rise, a long-awaited adaptation of a J.G. Ballard novel, and there’s already Oscar talk around his performance as country music star Hank Williams in the biopic I Saw the Light. It’s not all serious though: in 2014 he popped up briefly as The Great Escapo in Muppets Most Wanted. Coincidentally one of Hiddleston’s more out-there recent screen roles offered him his first onscreen brush with a Jaguar. In 2013, he starred alongside Tilda Swinton in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, perhaps the hippest vampire movie ever committed to film. His benignly blood-sucking character, Adam, drives a vintage model. “Jim was adamant that Adam’s car was a Jaguar XJS convertible from the 1970s, even though the character is living in the present day. We shot in Detroit and my character drives around the abandoned and desolate parts of the city. So I had the pleasure of driving this vintage XJS around by night for ten consecutive days and it still goes like a train. It’s gorgeous. The F-TYPE is great to drive and hard to beat, but it’s been beaten for sentimental reasons for me!” That said, Hiddleston has loved slipping into a villain’s “What’s distinctive about Jaguar is firstly that its designs are impeccably beautiful. Friends of mine who’ve driven with me have said it is like being inside a machine from the future” shoes again for the Jaguar films. His most recent is for the launch of the Jaguar XE and he says it’s been “completely thrilling from start to finish. I think there is an awareness of the sense of sophistication and humour of Jaguar in the campaign and that is a brilliant idea”. Ask him which film villains he finds most memorable and the names come thick and fast. “Goodness, I have many. Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs comes to mind. Christopher Lee as Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun is one of my personal favourites. Gary Oldman in Leon is very brilliant too.” Beyond enjoying the character he’s played for Jaguar, he’s also loved having the opportunity to get to know the cars. “What’s distinctive about Jaguar is firstly that its designs are impeccably beautiful. Friends of mine who’ve driven with me have said it is like being inside a machine from the future, the whole engineering is evolved beyond a contemporary car. They are very sleek, very smooth and enormously enjoyable to drive.” Sleek, smooth, enjoyable – they are words you could easily apply to Hiddleston’s performances too. But his acting actually offers so much more than those three words would suggest: it’s poise coupled with intelligence coupled with curiosity. Most excitingly, he’s still moving, still developing and still growing. “What’s fascinating about being an actor is that it feels like the game is always changing,” he concludes. “I think that’s true of life too.” See Tom as ‘Mr Big’ at youtube.com/jaguarcarslimited 48 j THE BLOCKBUSTER ISSUE

MAN OF MANY MOODS This page, clockwise: Hipster-ish as vampire Adam in Only Lovers Left Alive, honourable as Captain Nicholls in War Horse (chatting with director Steven Spielberg), and devious as Loki in Thor: The Dark World THE BLOCKBUSTER ISSUE j 49

 

JAGUAR MAGAZINE

 

Jaguar Magazine celebrates creativity in all its forms, with exclusive features that inspire sensory excitement, from beautiful design to cutting-edge technology.

In this issue, we explore the art of creativity from the Brazilian masters who devised the graceful art of Capoeira, to the Irish artists mixing new culture with old. You will also discover the creative line that links Victorian wallpaper to the iPhone. While the multi-talented actor and performer, Riz Ahmed, explains why it is the right time to reveal his true self to the world.

© JAGUAR LAND ROVER LIMITED 2020

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