The Hollywood-friendly British actors Idris Elba, Tom Hardy and Damian Lewis have all been tipped as the next James Bond. They may have a new challenger in Tom Hiddleston, the star of the BBC drama The Night Manager.
The Cambridge and Eton-educated actor, who played the comic-book villain Loki in Thor and The Avengers, has said in an interview that he loves everything to do with James Bond, and that the prospect of succeeding Daniel Craig in the lead role would be an “extraordinary opportunity”.
Hiddleston, 35, is filming Kong: Skull Island, the latest instalment of the King Kong franchise, alongside Samuel L Jackson and Brie Larson. He was recently named by Time magazine as one of the actors most suited to play 007.
“I’m a huge fan of the series,” Hiddleston told The Sunday Times. “We all went to see Spectre when we were shooting Skull Island in Hawaii. I simply love the theme tune, the tropes and the mythology. I love the whole thing. If it ever came knocking, it would be an extraordinary opportunity.
“I’m very aware of the physicality of the job. I would not take it lightly.”
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Hiddleston said that he had trained alongside ex-military stuntmen for Kong: Skull Island, in which he plays an SAS tracker sent to a South Pacific jungle island on a secret mission. The $190 million (£133 million) film, which is being shot in Australia, Hawaii and Vietnam, is due for release in a year’s time.
“I’m quite certain I’m not fit enough to be in the SAS, but I’ve made strides,” he said. “I’ve been trained rigorously by those people. I started about three months before filming. A lot of running. A lot of metcon, which is aerobic workout and resistance. And a lot of circuit training to get my stamina up.”
Hiddleston’s next film, I Saw the Light, in which he plays the singer-songwriter Hank Williams, will be released this month. He will also be seen as Dr Robert Laing in Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of JG Ballard’s 1975 novel High-Rise, which is due for release in May.
“The film is true to Ballard,” Hiddleston said. “It has a very British sense of humour, with a uniquely British underbelly of dark, troubling material.”