We’re so fickle around these parts. How fickle? It was just over a month ago that many of us ran mad with Tom Hiddleston crushes, and it took only a few weeks to pretty much end it for the majority. Check out Lainey’s timeline—she started crushing here and it ended here, a mere fourteen days apart. Two weeks was all it took. My crush took a beating as well. I accidentally wrecked it for Lainey by bringing up Hiddles’ Twitter, and my friends delighted in sending me frontrum-heavy videos of him, which can never be unseen. And then one day, it just clicked into place and my crush rebounded in full.
Tom Hiddleston is talented, smart and gorgeous, and he is a HUGE dork.
I love dorks. They’re my flavor. Hiddleston’s dorkiness is kind of endearing. I’m sure the guy has some ego tucked away somewhere, but his defining characteristic has rapidly become “enormous dork”, which when you consider his background includes a double-first at Cambridge and that he’s RADA trained, means the power of his dorkitude is overcoming his natural right to parade around as a SERIOUS AC-TOR, as many of his (lesser-qualified) peers do. Looking over the current crop of under-forty Brits making their way across the pond, what sets Hiddleston apart is a very down-to-earth accessibility that belies all the training and accomplishments. Like, I love Benedict Cumberbatch but I can’t imagine any real-life scenario that ends in any way other than him looking down his nose at me and saying, “Please. No.” But Hiddles is the one you could get a beer with and discuss who would win in a fight, a bear or a ninja (ninja-bear?).
Also, there’s that story about the cute kid from The Avengers set. The photo made its way around the internet last year, and I think most people, like me, assumed the kid belonged to someone involved with the movie, but no, it was just some kid that happened across the Central Park set. You can read the whole story here (Chris Evans comes off really well, too). I’m not into bugging actors, especially when they’re on set and working, but even my acid-and-rebar heart melts a little for a kid that gets to meet “real” superheroes, and I always appreciate actors who make time for the kidlets. It’s part of taking on that kind of role—you will always and forever be that character to little kids, and there’s a kind of responsibility in that. Don’t ruin their childhoods, you know? (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, ELLIOT FROM ET.)
And then there’s my kryptonite: Shakespeare. Hiddleston is doing Shakespeare. And not just any Shakespeare, but the Henry cycle (Henry IV parts 1 & 2 and Henry V). Show me Hiddlywinks in Shakespeare and I’m done. And that it’s high-level Shakespeare and not standard high school lit stuff is basically—me melting into the pavement. The BBC filmed the Henrys as part of the London 2012 festival and they’ll air later this summer (please don’t make us wait six months to see them in North America).
Hiddleston is Prince Hal, Henry IV’s bum of a son who gets his act together to be king in Henry V. Which means one of Shakespeare’s greatest lines is going to come out of his mouth (and have you ever noticed that thing he does with his mouth? Watch Hiddles talking some time and tell me it’s not outrageously sexy): Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close up the wall with our English dead. Favorite part of The Avengers. Shakespeare. Total dork. Tom Hiddleston might be my perfect man.
(Lainey: get him to quit Twitter then.)