I am Loki, of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious socks.
A comprehensive look at Tom Hiddleston, his events, his work, and his outfits...and the occasional fundraiser.
Instyle hosted their Best of British Talent Party at Shoreditch House in London. The event, co-sponsored by Lancome, celebrates British entertainers in the run up to the BAFTA Awards. At the time; many of the attendees including Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Luke Evans, Gemma Chan, and James Corden were still considered up-and-coming.
Tom Hiddleston may have been the least recognizable person at this party. He was literally listed as friendin articles the next day. And when they did include his name, they called him Tom Hiddlestone. Perhaps that's why he looks so grumpy in all the pictures?
But Tom went on to have a HUGE year in 2011. He starred in four major films (Thor, Midnight in Paris, The Deep Blue Sea, and War Horse). Instyle had no problem remembering his name the next year when Tom Hiddleston was included in their Best of British list.
Fashion:
Tom Hiddleston wore an Armani blazer, Intimissimi shirt, Armani Jeans leather pants, and Ariat roper boots.
Tom Hiddleston was interviewed by Elizabeth Day for The Observer Magazine. It's an interesting interview. It was released in the run up to The Night Manager being released in the UK. Tom talks about preparing for his role in the series by shadowing a real Night Manager at the Rosewood Hotel in London. He learned that the job was about "making every guest feel looked after".The cheapest room at the Rosewood is £470 per night and the most expensive is £10,000 per night! For £10,000 I expect my towels to be delivered by Tom Hiddleston too!
Tom also talks about his preparation to play Hank Williams in I Saw the Light. A role he is very proud of because "it was so far away from me; it was really not my life experience at all". Just two weeks into his training with Rodney Crowell, Tom Hiddleston performed live onstage at the Wheatland Music Festival in Michigan, which Tom called "absolutely terrifying".
I do have one major pet peeve. The article starts with Elizabeth Day commented that she was "hounded by several thousand Tom Hiddleston fan accounts". Thousands? Hounded? Really? It's especially hard to believe when on the day this interview was posted she also wrote that Tom fans were the "nicest, politeness bunch". Those are two very contradictory statements. I don't mean to single her out, this is a cheap trick that journalists have been using to describe fans in just about every Tom Hiddleston interview ever. And it creates this very negative misconception about fans.
Some other highlights from the interview:
“I suppose I’m fascinated by the private vulnerability and the exterior of people,” he says. “I think that’s an essential truth. I sort of quite like trying to find what makes people tick behind the construction of their identity.”
He says he finds the current debate about the number of middle-class actors in the profession divisive. “It’s socially divisive in a way it shouldn’t be, because I think wherever you are from you should be able to follow your passion. Wherever you went to school, if you have something authentic to contribute, you should be allowed to. There is an acknowledged problem of access and inequality of opportunity – I don’t know how to remedy that. But yeah, I’m on everyone’s side; I’m on the side of the actors. I’m not there to divide the world into pieces.”
“I’m called ‘Uncle Yay Monster’ {by his neice} because when we run, she basically wants to run as fast as me but she can’t, so after a while I just pick her up and she screams: ‘Yay!’ It’s exhausting, but enormous fun.”
“God, it’s so embarrassing,” he says. It all started a few years ago in Korea. “It was a big public Q&A, there were 7,000 people there, and I was taking questions from the audience. Somebody asked: ‘Of what body part are you most proud?’ That’s just a wrong question, to which there are only wrong answers. So I said: ‘My feet’ and they said: ‘Why?’ and I said: ‘Without my feet, I couldn’t run and I couldn’t dance.’ And they said: ‘Well, now we have to see you dance.’ So I danced… And I created a monster. There we go.”
Accompanying the interview was a photoshoot with Daniel Stier.
Fashion:
Instead of being fitted out by a stylist - Tom Hiddleston chose to wear his own clothing for this photoshoot. On the cover Tom is wearing his Reiss Noir Melange Weave shirt.
..,and is wearing his Polo Ralph Lauren suit for the remainder of the photoshoot.
In January 2013, Tom Hiddleston made his first mission as an Ambassador for Unicef UK. Tom visited Guinea in West Africa to learn more about Unicef's work with education, child protection, water and sanitation in the country. Prior to the trip, there was an online contest to guess which country Tom would be traveling to. Only three people were able to correctly guess Guinea. Tom posted several videos of himself very excitedly preparing for the trip. What do you pack for a humanitarian trip? Anti-malaria tablets. Mosquito Net. Baseball Hat. Sweets and biscuits for the children. Travel towels. Adapters and headphones. And a head torch. Tommy was very excited about his head torch.
Tom also packed his computer. While in Guinea, he kept a field diary detailing what he saw every day. And people could follow a long with the journey using #Tom_UnicefUK. I included excerpts and pictures from each day below, and you can read Tom's full Diary but click on the subheadings. He was joined on the trip by Luke Windsor (his publicist), Harry Borden (photographer), as well as Louise O'Shea and Pauline Llorca from Unicef UK. Julien Harneis, the Representative for Unicef in Guinea, served as their guide.
Tom Hiddleston arrived in Guinea on January 22. Tom writes about experiencing the heat and energy of the country, and how the excitement kept him up all night. At the airport terminal they viewed groups of children reading under the streetlights because it was one of the few safe places for them to do so.
Tom also visited the Tinafan Centre in Conakry. Children are able to learn acrobatics, circus arts, and practical skills at the centre.
Above all else, the children, who will inherit the future, and shape the future of this country – need clean water, iron, minerals, vitamins, inoculation against disease, and education.
On his second day in Guinea, Tom Hiddleston visited the Donka Hospital National Institute of Child Health and Nutrition where he saw children suffering from the effects of malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases. This is the only children's hospital in Conakry.
Any surges of adventurous adrenalin that I had previously felt about travelling in West Africa were tempered immediately by the sight of these children. The doctors and nurses were helpful and informative about the specific details of each of the children’s individual problems, but I was simply overwhelmed by the sight of so many small infants in such great need. One small ward – about the size of a single room in a two-star or three-star hotel in the UK – housed at least twenty children, some of whom I was told had slim chances of survival. Their arms and legs were indescribably thin, their cheeks tear-stained, their skin a harrowing, slate-grey. Most shocking to me was the speed and urgency of their breathing, asleep or awake, but it was uniformly unsettled and uneven. When you see a child struggling so hard simply to breathe, it makes your heart hurt. Many of these children had lung infections, and most if not all had been admitted because of malnutrition, or an inheritance of a condition due to the malnutrition of their mothers.
After the hospital they headed to Project Tinafan to watch the circus, a picture of sickness and disease juxtaposed immediately with a picture of health and well-being.
Their performance was explosive and dizzying – acrobatics, human pyramids, trampolining, contortionists – a display of strength, flexibility and precision on a par with, if not beyond, the very best physical performances I have seen in ballet, contemporary dance, or Cirque du Soleil. They performed with raw joy. Their trainer “Prince” also teaches them how to paint, emphasising to me that how important it is for his students to understand the power of passion and positivity in creativity after the human body passes its peak.
The group then drove six hours to the rural village of Saramoussayah to meet with the elders, doctors, and local women to discuss practices to protect children from disease such as breastfeeding, handwashing, and vaccinations. In Guinea, Unicef provides vaccinations to everyone.
Day Three was another long travel day. They visited the village of Bissikirima and appeared in their Unicef funded radio station. Tom also learned about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). FGM has been banned in Guinea since 1965 but the country still has the second high prevalence of FGM in the world. More than 95% of women and girls have had this procedure. Only Somalia ranks higher.
Their next stop was the village of Loppe to see Unicef's sanitation programme. Unicef built latrines and teaches basic sanitation steps to prevent the spread of disease.
And Tom met an inspiration family in Loppe who have implemented all the practical teachings from Unicef in order to keep their family healthy.
What happened next was the most uplifting experience of my journey so far. I was invited by a young family into their home. They live in a circular hut, under which is one singular room, with a circumference of about 15 feet across. The roof is thatch made of straw. Inside I am introduced by Idrissa, the regional chief of Unicef’s office for Eastern Guinea, to a couple and their three children, a boy and two girls. They are uniformly beautiful. The father is calm and quiet, with an open, handsome face, while the mother is shy, her skin radiant, and a smile that could launch a thousand ships. Her children are well behaved, quiet and curious. Idrissa asks if I have any questions. I compliment them on their house, for it is beautiful inside. There is a bed, which serves also as bench and table, with various tools and pots hung strategically along the walls. I say how well her children look, how strong they seem. Her elder daughter reminds me of my niece. I ask if there have been any problems at all in their upbringing and nurture. “No,” she says simply. Were they born at the centre de santé? “No,” she says, “they were all born at home.” I ask if she had easy access to vaccinations. “Yes,” she says. “The day they were born”. She says their biggest problem is that they do not have enough food. They work hard, and still there is not enough. But they grow their own rice crop and haricots. Pauline asks if she was able to breastfeed her children. “Yes,” she says, “for six months each of them”. How did you know to do that, I ask. “I walked to the centre de santé,” she replies, “when I was pregnant. They told me I should breastfeed. Also I heard it on the radio”. That’s fantastic, I say. I tell the father I have been looking at the water situation in the village, and the new programme for better water hygiene. He replies that it’s very important. He always tells his son he must wash his hands before eating. I tell him his boy is looking strong, and that when I was a child I was always taught mens sana in corpore sano. A healthy mind in a healthy body. Idrissa translates. The father says this has made his day. It is a great honour for him. He is happy.
In Kankan, Tom Hiddleston visited a reintegration program for former child soldiers supported by Unicef's Peace Building Fund. The program provides vocational job training in fields such as woodworking, welding, plumbing, and masonry.
They then headed to the gold mining village of Mandiana. The village is extremely rural and has the highest rate of malnutrition in Guinea. Tom learned more about how children are tested and treated for malnutrition. And how Unicef is teaching parents to recognize the signs so that children can get treatment before it's too late.
There was an impromptu focus group with women and children outside the Centre de Santé.
What is the biggest problem for you here, I ask? Water, they reply. There is no water. The statement is so basic and baldly stated it hits me like a club to the head. Can you talk more about that, we ask? One woman speaks up. There is only one well, it is a long walk from the village, and we only have access to it for certain hours of the day because it is controlled by the military. I don’t need to expand on this. They are deprived of a basic need.
Tom talked more about this moment in an appeal video he made for Unicef UK.
Tom's final day, was his most fun day. On the road back to Conakry they visited several schools. In Kouroussa, he played football with a group of children from L’École Primaire Layiya.
It’s so fun. It’s just like any other game of football in any other school anywhere in the world: frantic, breathless, playful. The scuffling of shoes, the groaning when you miss, the laughing when you fall over. Dust rises in the yard, so thick that you can’t see the ball. It’s baking hot. And these children run like lightning.
They then headed to the École Moriakhory in Kindia to learn more about the Fast Track Initiative. The schools in this programme are helping more than 50,000 children in Guinea.
The children in École Moriakhory are obedient and alert. I enter one classroom and there’s
no teacher in there. But they’re all sitting quietly. It occurs to me that it was never like that when I was at school in England. If the teacher left the room, there’d be a riot. Here, children want to learn.
Tom closed out his time in Guinea with this thought: As we pull away I feel glad that on my last day I saw such a joyful example of Unicef’s work in Guinea. The country has many difficulties, and I have faced them in all their stark reality this week. But to see healthy children, in love with learning, and happy in their play is restorative and invigorating. It gives me a sense of balance.
On his return home, Tom write a reflective piece about his transformative time in Guinea.
Before my visit to Guinea, I knew that global hunger and malnutrition was a problem. But the issue was only academic in my mind. When you’ve seen malnourished children with your own eyes and their disadvantaged start in life, a moral imperative compels you to act and becomes impossible to ignore.
Fashion:
Obviously this is a post meant to focus on charity work and not what Tom's wearing so I am only going to highlight one thing. The Unicef Ambassador shirt Tom is wearing in most images can be bought online from Unicef USA/UK (or whatever you local Unicef is). The Help Spread the Unicef Message shirt is $20 from Unicef USA and proceeds will provide 64 sachets of oral rehydration salts that help children combat dehydration and diarrhea.
Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams, and Eddie Redmayne had a full day recording interviews to promote their new film, Early Man. For the majority of the promo material Tom is paired up with Maisie Williams. Here's a fun feature where Aardman's Jim Parkyn teaches Tom, Maisie, and Eddie how to create a Hognob clay model.
Finally, they were interviewed by Blue Peter presenter, Lindsey Russell. There will be a special episode of Blue Peter on January 18th featuring these interviews and footage from the green red carpet premiere. Be sure to tune in to see how Tom earned his Blue Peter Badge.
Here are some models from the film that were on display.
Fashion:
Tom Hiddleston was wearing a John Smedley Lundy pullover ($250) along with his trusty Tissot watch.
I know that there has been a lot of speculation about Tom possibly wearing a new pair of jeans in the press interviews. Unfortunately, I have yet to come across a full body image of Tom from this press day so I can't update his full outfit. I believe that Tom is most likely wearing his jbrand jeans and not a new pair.
Odeon Cinema in London rolled out the green carpet for the World Premiere of Early Man. This ended up being the only premiere for Early Man and just about every member of the cast and crew attended: Johnny Vegas, Peter Lord, Eddie Redmayne, Rob Byrdon, Maisie Williams, Tom Hiddleston, Nick Park, George Smith, Blake Richardson, Reece Bibby, Carla Shelley, and musical group New Hope Club. New Hope Club recorded several songs for the Early Man soundtrack.
Early Man is a stop-motion comedy from Aardman about a Stone Age tribe that challenges a team from the Bronze Age to a football/soccer match in order to save their home from industrialization. Tom Hiddleston voices the villain (of course), Lord Nooth. Maisie Williams plays Goona, a Bronze Age citizen who helps the Stone Age tribe. And Eddie Redmayne plays to adorable Caveman Dug.
A look at some of the highlights from the premiere. Tom said he signed on because the script was so funny and made him laugh out loud. *After seeing the movie I can concur that this is Tom's funniest role to date!
Out of all the main cast - Tom spent the most amount of time meeting fans and taking pictures.
A young blogger posted a video from inside the premiere and the after party. Even Eddie Redmayne feels that Tom has the best lines in the movie.
***Coincidentally, exactly one year later (January 14, 2019) I am flying home from ACE Arizona and Early Man is one of the featured in-flight movies.
Fashion:
This was Tom Hiddleston's first red carpet event of 2018 and he did not disappoint! Unlike his co-stars who opted for more casual, Tom Hiddleston went with a Gucci Monaco suit for the premiere. This was the end of Gucci Tom!
Tom added some pop to his suit with some really fun Gucci accessories. This Gucci Dot tie ($200)is probably my favorite tie he's ever worn (maybe tied with the McQueen from the London Film Festival)
Tom also debuted a new pair of glasses from Mykita.
