Anticipating the upcoming Blu-Ray and DVD release of Marvel Studios' superhero team-up of a lifetime, The Avengers, SFX (with a thanks to Digital Spy for the heads-up) has recently interviewed Tom Hiddleston, who played the main antagonist "Loki" in the Joss Whedon-directed movie. In it, the actor shares his "exhausting" experience in playing a villain, the story behind his role reprisal as Loki in The Avengers, and many more. Check it out right below...
On his favorite aspect of the "Loki" character in The Avengers:
"Loki is such a great, larger-than-life character. He has so many dimensions. He is motivated by jealousy, ambition, pride, vanity, arrogance and greed – and yet he gets to have a lot of fun because of his predisposition towards mischief. On one level, he is this grandiose agent of chaos. He’s a cackling villain standing on rooftops, laughing at the sky. But on another level, he’s a lost child and a brother who was always the second string because he grew up in the shadow of Thor. He’s a rejected, abandoned son who has no place in the universe, so all his destructive anger is motivated by a lack of self-esteem. I don’t think he even knows it, but he’s desperately trying to give himself a purpose."
On how he discovered that Loki will have a part in The Avengers:
"Kevin Feige suggested Loki would be part of The Avengers storyline when I got cast in Thor, but I was so busy trying to build the character that I couldn’t think about it. I knew perfectly well that if I was rubbish in Thor, I wouldn’t get anywhere near The Avengers. That’s when I thought I’d just take everything one step at a time."
"Towards the end of the Thor shoot, Joss Whedon came into Marvel for a script meeting and he asked Kenneth Branagh to see a rough cut of Thor. Joss wanted to see what he could do with Chris Hemsworth and where to take the character of Thor, as well as Loki. Joss loved it so much that we went for a cup of tea and we had a long, fantastic conversation where we swapped loads of ideas. Joss said to me, "There’s been some talk of multiple villains in this movie, but I think you can do it on your own," which was the most incredible compliment. I had a mountain to climb after that."
On how it feels to work with Joss Whedon and the A-List actors:
"What impressed me the most about Joss initially was the incredible screenplay we had to work with on Marvel’s The Avengers. Directing this film was a feat in itself, but his screenplay was phenomenal. I’m sure none of us really knew what to expect, but I take my hat off to Joss for that. He was incredibly open and that’s what you want as an actor: you want to collaborate. Everyone has a certain level of ownership of their character and Joss was very respectful of that possession."
"If I’m completely honest, I felt very much like the junior boy on The Avengers. I was in the company of a group of actors that I grew up watching and respecting. Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey, Jr. are cinematic legends. I remember watching Robert in Chaplin while I was training at RADA thinking it was one of the most extraordinary pieces of acting I’d ever seen. In addition to that, Scarlett Johansson had already done Lost In Translation when I was at university, so I just felt incredibly lucky and privileged to be working with these actors and to be in these scenes with them. It was amazing."
On playing the main antagonist of the movie:
"It was a huge undertaking because it was an amazing challenge and an amazing privilege to play the bad guy. It was a challenge to dial up the menace and I was exhausted when I finished filming. It’s funny how negative energy is so exhausting, and it was certainly a challenge to cultivate Loki’s hatefulness every day. I had to get inside his reservoirs of pain and make that feel real. Hating is exhausting; it’s much more exhausting than loving, and that’s what took it out of me – as well as some of the physical challenges that we all undertook."
On his favorite superhero:
"As a kid, I loved Superman. For me, Christopher Reeve as Superman was the first superhero. I sat smack-bang in the middle of the audience for that movie. I was the right age at the right time, and I spent a lot of my childhood playing Superman games in the playground."
The actor also discusses about the challenging stunt work, the make-up and training process, and the superpower he'd like to have in real life in the full interview, so be sure to follow the link provided below to check it out right on the site.
In Marvel's The Avengers, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster following the emergence of an unexpected enemy that threatens global safety and security. Under the direction of Joss Whedon, and featuring an all-star cast that consists of Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johanson, Tom Hiddleston, Cobie Smulders, and Samuel L. Jackson, the movie is set to be released on Blu-Ray and DVD on September 17, 2012.