I’ve never really had an inclination towards acting as a profession. Some people are just born with that “performer” gene, or the “Look at me!” gene. I wasn’t. That being said, I would gladly become an actor if it meant I would be asked to film a part in a Muppet movie. Seriously, what actor would ever turn down a part in a Muppet movie? NO ONE. Not one single actor. And so here we are, the UK trailer for Muppets Most Wanted, which featured actors like Ty Burrell, Tina Fey, Tom Hiddleston (!!!), Ricky Gervais, Christoph Waltz, Stanley Tucci and P. Diddy. HIDDLESTON with a mustache is everything.

So now that I’ve successfully teased you with some Hiddlestache, let’s talk about how I eventually turned to the dark side, the Dragonfly Side. It was Tommy’s extreme, crazy, adorable, sweet, try-hard promotional tour for Thor 2: The Excessive Loki that finally got me. I just laid down and let the Hiddleston wash over me. It felt like velvet. Anyway, The Guardian has a nice piece about how other actors should be taking a page from Hiddleston’s Book of Tricks for all future international promotional tours:

Tom Hiddleston’s utterly adorable promotional antics for the Marvel blockbuster Thor: The Dark World rumble on. With his good humour, a voice like volcanic sand slaked in honey, and an innate understanding of what makes internet memes tick, he’s managed to become the most beloved posh person in the UK. That fluttering noise you can hear is the net’s heart beating excitedly against its ribcage.

Playing Loki, the god of mischief, in Thor’s first instalment and Avengers Assemble made him a favourite with Marvel fans looking for something edgier than Robert Downey Jr’s wisecracks. He cemented his position with a gloriously camp appearance in character at this year’s Comic-Con where the crowd became masochistically drunk on his verbal abuse. And after that first delicious whiff of adoration, he’s now taking deep inhalations of opiated fame, capering about in the name of Thor, self-promotion and just plain old fun.

There’s Loki bullying cute children; the explanation of delayed gratification to a baffled Cookie Monster; the unleashing of a robot dance in pyjamas on MTV – the latter prompting a rare moment of fawning from hard-to-impress women’s site Jezebel as sassy, snarky users dissolved in a puddle of gifs and digital yearning in the comments.

He’s deployed his considerable dramatic range in some lowest common denominator crowdpleasing, doing impressions of the likes of Alan Carr, Chris Evans, Owen Wilson, and Samuel L Jackson. He impersonated the poster pose of his Thor: The Dark World co-star Natalie Portman, prompting an instant meme, and has shown a willingness to perform karaoke at the slightest prompting, be it a rather freeform rendition of Man in the Mirror to screaming Korean fans or a version of Stand By Me in a car on German TV. Cue fan fiction and more Tumblr heat than a Kate Upton photoshoot.

How much of Thor’s massive box-office success is down to his mugging is debatable, but it’s certainly making a rather po-faced sequel seem frothier and more relevant than it might otherwise have been. It all also continues to prove there’s nothing that makes the knees of the non-English weaker than a rumpled Brit doing ungainly things, as Colin Firth and Hugh Grant also found to their benefit – perhaps the slightly grumpy Jude Law would have crossed over with more success had he gritted his teeth and skewered his aloof, GQ-endorsed pulchritude.

Hiddleston though doesn’t seem to be going through the motions, which is why it works. Like Jennifer Lawrence, his is an unfiltered realness that is fast becoming the ultimate asset in post-Twitter, post-PR Hollywood; he makes it a lot harder for actors to go on to platitude autopilot, droning keywords like “inspirational” and “humble” during a hotel-room press junket. Expect a lot of earnestly constructed virality in his wake from stars desperate for the common touch, and hopefully a lot more ballad crooning, crotch thrusting and general Loki-grade mischief from Hiddleston as he shows them how it should be done.

[From The Guardian]

Yeah, I guess I would agree with this. I think Tommy has been largely delightful the past three months or so – he’s been playful, sweet and most importantly, he’s just been “game”. He’s game for anything you want to throw at him. He will quote Shakespeare to ducks. He will do the Snake Hips for MTV. He will sit on a bean bag chair and push little children. Autumn Tommy is an absolute pleasure. A Velvet Pleasure.

But… what’s that, little voice? Oh, yes, I remember when I fell out of casual love with Tommy earlier this year. It was after his self-important, self-satisfied performance at the MTV Movie Awards. Remember when he wrestled the mic away from Samuel L. Motherf—king Jackson? Yeah, that was not a good look for Tommy. Thankfully, he seems to have learned his lesson from that incident. I hope.

Photos courtesy of GQ UK, WENN.