Tom Hiddleston has been promoting things for the last few months, from I Saw the Light to The Night Manager—which is good—to High Rise, premiering on demand at the end of the month. I commented earlier this year that it seems like, on his current promotional run, we’re getting a more subdued, less accessible Hiddleston, and now Vulture is also noticing that his days as “the internet’s boyfriend” are behind him. That’s fine. That type of hype won’t last forever—the internet is a fickle bitch—and it’s always interesting to watch actors transition through the phases of their careers. It’s just that Saint Tom the Huge Dork was so fun.
The Vulture piece is all about how Hiddleston has shifted his public persona, drawing back from his rabid internet fandom and courting more mature audiences with stuff like The Night Manager and High Rise. He side-steps the question about his relationship with Elizabeth Olsen (“There’s no ring on this finger.”), and quotes Alan Rickman on the opacity of actors: “If you want to know who I am, it’s all in the work.” There is a very definite wall around Hiddleston now. It’s not just no-commenting his love life—that’s fine, whatever dude—it’s that his personality seems carefully tucked away, so as not to give anyone anything to talk about.
His dancing days are done, and though he won’t ever live them down entirely—fickle it may be, but the internet also never forgets—he’s obviously anxious to distance himself from that time in his life when he enjoyed being successful and popular. We’ve now entered the “Ugh, I’m just here to ACT” phase. So this is our new Tom Hiddleston: Grown up, noncommittal on anything that smacks of controversy, and a little precious about his persona. “I should just dance on talk shows,” he says at the end of the interview. “It’s much more interesting, isn’t it?” I mean…yeah.
Attached - Tom Hiddleston at the Tribeca Film Festival screening of High Rise this week.
