Tom Hiddleston: Maybe these are the productions that made me want to do theatre

Tom Hiddleston has just wrapped up starring opposite Hayley Atwell in a record-breaking production of Much Ado About Nothing. 

The West End staging, directed by Jamie Lloyd, was described as “simply sublime Shakespeare” by our lead critic Sarah Crompton.

Not long after, we caught up with Hiddleston on the green carpet at the Olivier Awards, where he and Atwell had the honour of presenting two of the evening’s prizes.

We couldn’t resist asking the performer what his favourite stage shows (and show tunes!) are.

“Guys and Dolls is my favourite musical by some margin. I love that musical,” he starts. “Especially a production I saw which was directed by Richard Eyre at the National Theatre in 1997.”

Hiddleston flexes his theatrical knowledge, explaining that the show was a revival of an earlier production that Eyre directed some years before. At the performance, “there were seven encores of ‘Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat’. Seven. And I loved every single one.”

However, it is straight plays that Hiddleston prefers, and he goes back into the archives to decide his favourites: “It’s an equal tie for me between two that are the big hitters in terms of the impact that they’ve made.”

He eventually decides on Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman, specifically a production at the National Theatre, starring Paul Scofield, Vanessa Redgrave and Eileen Atkins.

A few years later, he saw a production of Othello “by the great William Shakespeare, and directed by Sam Mendes.” In the title role was David Harewood, alongside Simon Russell Beale and Claire Skinner.

“I still remember almost every moment of both of those productions,” Hiddleston says, smiling. “Maybe those productions are the ones that made me want to be in the theatre.”

And maybe for some new thespians, it is Hiddleston’s own Shakespearian performance that has encouraged them to approach the theatre themselves!