Tom Hiddleston is perfect. What else is new? We thought a man with a double first from Cambridge and an astonishing start to his acting career would have something interesting and articulate to say about himself. We were right. (OH NO THEY DIDN'T)

'As an actor, the labels that are so easily attachable to me - like Old Etonian or Cambridge graduate or Rada alumnus - are, in a way, the least interesting things about me,' said Tom Hiddleston

 'You know how tennis players raise each other’s game, how Nadal plays his best tennis when he’s up against Federer? Well, acting with Robert Downey Jr is like playing Agassi. You never know what he’s going to do next. Unless, of course, you happen to be throwing him out of a window and he’s shouting, “Throw me harder, baby. Let’s make it real.”’

Tom Hiddleston shakes his head and laughs. It’s been some journey from the darkness of a cinema in Malmo, Sweden, where four years ago, during a break from filming the first season of Wallander, he spent an evening watching Downey Jr signal his spectacular return to form in the first instalment of Iron Man.

 Now, in The Avengers, the superhero film to end them all, this charming Old Etonian and Cambridge graduate reprises his role as Loki, the baddie from Thor, and gets to do battle with a line-up of Marvel Comics’ most iconic characters: Iron Man (Downey Jr), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).

But first, back to that evening in 2008. Hiddleston was in Sweden having landed a small part as the sidekick to Kenneth Branagh’s brow-beaten detective. Up to that point, he’d made a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearances in TV dramas, starred in a small British film and won rave reviews for his stage work, collecting an Olivier Award in the process.


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