Tom Hiddleston: ‘Acting should portray life’s complexities’

Tom Hiddleston is drawn to playing complicated characters because he has “never met anybody who wasn’t complex”.
The 35-year-old actor is best known for playing Loki in the Thor and The Avengers movies, while his latest role sees him portray singer Hank Williams on the big screen in I Saw the Light.
And while Tom acknowledges many of his on-screen alter egos have been somewhat troubled, he thinks this is more realistic than playing someone entirely superficial.
“I don’t know that it’s deliberate in any conscious way, and that’s just because I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who wasn’t complex,” he told The A.V. Club of his character choices. “I’ve never met a perfect human being, which I don’t mean in a judgmental way. I mean that every soul and every individual is fragile and vulnerable. The experience of being alive is complex and contradictory.”
Tom added that he finds the concept of identity a “fascinating” one, as well as the contradiction between the face we present to the world and what’s going on inside.
“It’s one of ups and downs and twists and turns and insecurities, and I think if acting has any power it should express that,” he continued.
He is already receiving rave reviews for his performance in I Saw the Light. And in order to properly portray the singer, Tom carefully studied the history of the man to ensure he did him justice.
“I really sharpened my untrained and amateur interest in psychology. I had to try and study the psychology of this man—his self-destructive instincts, his demons – and get to the bottom of who he was,” he added. “Addiction is a symptom of something, and I tried to understand why he was so self-destructive. On top of that, to sing and to play like he did, and to inhabit his charisma and his gift and his genius, and then the physical transformation on top of it – to do all of them at the same time was a sort of perfect storm.”