The poshest ever Bond in waiting...
As bookies suspend bets on Tom Hiddleston donning 007’s tux, a look at the Old Etonian who is shy about his love life but not about baring all on screen
WHEN James Bond slaps down a pile of gaming chips on the roulette table, the casino doesn’t complain. It may be a little shaken but it’s definitely not stirred. Not so the bookmakers – for when a gambler placed a hefty sum on heartthrob actor Tom Hiddleston becoming the next 007 they declared “no more bets”. Not even at odds of 2-1 on.
There had been a flurry of wagers since The Night Manager star Tom was reportedly spotted meeting Bond producer Barbara Broccoli and Sam Mendes, director of Skyfall and Spectre, in London last week. A spokeswoman for bookmakers Coral said: “There’s no smoke without fire and following the big gamble in the last 24 hours we’ve had no choice but to pull the plug on the market.”
If 35-year-old Hiddleston does land the world’s best-known role, taking over from Daniel Craig, he’ll become the classiest James Bond ever because he was educated at Eton and gained a double first in classics at Cambridge. The name’s Posh. James Posh.
Compare his privileged background to previous Bond stars: Sean Connery is a Scots former milkman whose mum was a cleaner; Sir Roger Moore is a policeman’s son from Lambeth, south London; Aussie George Lazenby’s dad was a railway worker; Timothy Dalton went to grammar school in Derbyshire; Pierce Brosnan left comprehensive school at 16; and Daniel Craig, whose dad was a pub landlord, failed his 11-plus.
Only David Niven, who played Bond in the 1967 spoof Casino Royale, comes close. He was expelled from school at 10 over a series of pranks which spoiled his chances of going to Eton.
Should Hiddleston become 007 it will be a clear case of life imitating art because in Ian Fleming’s classic books James Bond went to school at the elite public school. After his parents were killed in an accident Bond was sent to Eton at the age of 12, only to be sent down after what Fleming described as “trouble with a maid”.
Despite Hiddleston’s attempts to play down his keenness to be Bond, his enthusiasm has shone through in several interviews. “Time magazine ran a poll and there were 100 actors on the list, including Angelina Jolie,” he said in one. “But yes, it’s nice to be included in the 100.
“I’m a huge fan of the series. We all went to see Spectre when we were shooting Skull Island in Hawaii. I simply love the theme tune and the mythology. I love the whole thing. If it ever came knocking, it would be an extraordinary opportunity.”
He said he was “very aware of the physicality of the job. I would not take it lightly”. He proved his ability to grow into a role when he auditioned for the part of Marvel Comic superhero Thor “because I’m tall and blond and classically trained”.
The casting director gave Hiddleston six weeks to bulk up for the film so he went on a strict diet and gained 20 pounds of muscle. In the end he didn’t get the part – but played the Norse god’s arch-enemy Loki instead. It was Hiddleston’s first film role and to prepare he trained in the Brazilian martial art of capoeira.
He takes acting very seriously. When he played the lead role in Shakespeare’s dark tragedy Coriolanus he listened to Holst’s The Planets Suite to get himself in the right mood and ran up and down the theatre fire escape before going on stage.
In his new film I Saw The Light, which came out in March, Hiddleston stars as American country singer Hank Williams, who died of heart failure at the age of 29. Before filming started Hiddleston went on a gruelling diet and exercise regime to lose enough weight so he looked physically ill and was able to give a remarkable imitation of Williams’s final years of pain, alcohol and drug abuse.
Not only that. He spent two hours a day with a dialect coach mastering the Alabama accent and learned to mimic Williams’s singing voice with such accuracy that he was able to perform
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry in front of 1,500 people at a country music festival.
But it was Hiddleston’s suave performance in superb BBC drama series The Night Manager this year that was seen by many critics as an audition to be the next Bond. He played a former soldier working in a classy hotel in Cairo who becomes caught up in a world of arms dealing, murder and intrigue.
HE caused a sensation by revealing his bottom in a graphic sex scene with co-star Elizabeth Debicki, 25. When that episode was screened on US TV recently the naked bottom was censored and angry women viewers bombarded Twitter to complain – using the hashtag #Hiddlesbum. The network relented and the bare rear was eventually shown late at night.
Hiddleston was born in London’s Westminster in 1981. His mother Diana was an arts administrator and former stage manager and his father James a chemist. They divorced when Hiddleston was a teenager and he says: “I like to think it made me more compassionate in my understanding of human frailty.” His younger sister Emma is an actress and his older sister Sarah is a journalist in India.
On his mother’s side Hiddleston is a great-grandson of Vice Admiral Reginald Servaes and a great-greatgrandson of food producer Sir Edmund Vestey, who introduced frozen and processed Argentinian meat to Europe and made a fortune.
During Hiddleston’s second term at Cambridge a talent agent spotted
him in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire and after graduating he studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 2008 he won the Laurence Olivier Award for best newcomer in a play for his role in Cymbeline and three years later won the Empire award for best male newcomer and was also nominated for the Bafta rising star award for his role in Thor.
In 2013 he won the MTV Movie Award for best fight and best villain for his role in The Avengers and for Coriolanus he won an award for best actor. He has also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, The Deep Blue Sea, Woody Allen’s romantic comedy Midnight In Paris, the BBC series Henry IV, Henry V and the romantic vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive.
Now he looks as if he’s about to be catapulted into super-stardom as Bond. He has always been guarded about his private life and friends say ambition has kept him away from serious relationships since he split from actress Susannah Fielding five years ago. He has been linked to a host of women, among them Thor co-star Kat Dennings, Oscar-nominated Jessica Chastain and Sherlock actress Lara Pulver – and there have been reports of romance with his latest co-star, American actress Elizabeth Olsen who plays Mrs Hank Williams.
They have been seen on dates in London but friends say that if he has to choose between love and being 007 there will only be one winner. James Bond would definitely have approved.