Earlier this month, Tom Hiddleston did an interview with the Sunday Times magazine, and he was asked specifically about the “James Bond rumors.” Instead of waving the question off, Tom (ever earnest) talked about how much he loved the 007 franchise and he said, “If it ever came knocking, it would be an extraordinary opportunity.” While it’s true that pretty much every Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English actor in a certain age range gets “James Bond rumors,” it did feel like Tom was taking it a bit too seriously, like he really wanted to be up for the job. Thankfully, when Tom appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday, he seemed to laugh off the question, saying that it was basically a national past-time in the UK to talk about who should be Bond. And as it turns out, Hiddles keeps getting Bond questions.
Tom Hiddleston is definitely James Bond material. He’s British. He’s sexy. And he can certainly hold his own in action scenes (hello, Loki!). It’s no wonder his name continually pops up as someone who has the chops to replace Daniel Craig as 007.
“I don’t know honestly if I have a shot, but it’s flattering that some people think I do,” Hiddleston told me last night at the premiere of his new Hank Williams biopic I Saw the Light (in theaters on March 25). He’s also not convinced that Craig is ready to say goodbye to the iconic character. “I think Daniel Craig has been one of the very best and I bet he does more,” Hiddleston said.
“When I was a child, when I was five years old, I remember very clearly on the BBC, they used to play reruns of the Sean Connery and Roger Moore Bonds every Saturday night,” he remembered. “It was a thrill that my parents let me stay up past my bedtime to watch it. God forbid you got back to school on Monday and you didn’t because that’s all people would talk about in the playground.”
How cute, he’s trying to pretend he had a normal school experience instead of attending posh Dragon School and then Eton. That being said, I watched James Bond movies as a kid too. My parents loved them, and that’s probably why I still care about the franchise to this day. Which is why… I don’t want Lord Dragonfly to play James Bond. He’s just not James Bond, you guys. I’m not saying it HAS to be Idris Elba, but at this point, it would definitely have to be someone as cool as Idris. And that’s not Tommy Hiddleston.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I like TH.Very talented. Just not Bond for me, though. I’m a true believer in Idris as Bond. I would also take Aiden Turner. Several times. And it would not be a joyless slog.
i have only seen him in night manager so far – a little bit too vanilla for me. also, he is too young to be bond – turner too I think. be interesting to see who it will be.
Yeah, I like Hiddles in most of his roles, but Bond gets a big, fat NO from me. Idris is a better choice.
Bleurgh! I will never watch him in a Bond film. My interest in the series will end abruptly there, possibly forever. His face gives me rage
Don’t see what was wrong with his school story or how that couldn’t possibly be something that happened. What would even posher boys be talking about as kids? Pheasants and fox hunting? I wouldn’t call myself a superfan, just a fan, but geez ease up.
He’s asked the question frequently and he has never come right out and said he wants it. I think every British actor grows up wanting to be Bond and Hamlet. The thread about Henry Cavil and his girlfriend quotes him as saying he WANTS the job and his Man from UNCLE could be considered just as much an audition as the media considers Tom’s TNM. And I don’t want Cavill anywhere near Bond.
Tom did a really nice interview with Charlie Rose yesterday with no talk of Bond.
5 year old brit posh kids don’t watch tv. Or they do, but can’t mention it when they are adults? Don’t know at this point.
Well, the school anecdote was completely made up because the only times the BBC screens films on a Saturday night are high days and holidays, like Easter and Christmas? Certainly not 007 for weeks on end. Or that James Bond is actually a water cooler topic for kids at elementary school in Britain?
Just makes me think that every anecdote he ever gives is also made up to suit whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear.
I don´t think Tom lied.
He just can´t remember all the facts or events that happened more than 30 ago.
Most of us can´t either.
So, please, give him a break!
Sixer, not say you are wrong but we can’t be sure he has been quoted correctly can we?
I was going to suggest his parents might have taped the movies from another night and let him watch it on the Saturday night, but that wouldn’t make sense if his school friends were also discussing it on the Monday.
Sixer, please accept these sea sickness pills for how often you get on and off the Hiddleston boat!
When you’re a five yr old, a few holidays binging on Bond movies can seem like an entire year of Saturday nights with 007. Children don’t tend to accurately remember many things. They remember things that made the biggest impression on them and even then they tend to just remember specific details of those events not necessarily everything just what they really liked or hated. Those impressions tend to serve as markers of time which is how kids would tend to place events in their past again lending to an inaccurate sense of time passage.
Also Tom tends to speak in generalities even when he’s talking about himself. I’ve gotten snagged by that a few times, but I don’t think it’s calculated deception rather hasty recollections that are generalized making it sound like it happened all the time.
How can you remember what was on BBC 30 years ago, except for what you watched?
That bugged me too. It was totally unnecessary snark – did only posh kids get to stop up late to watch James Bond?
People lost their Ish when Daniel Craig was announced too and I personally thinks he has been a great Bond. I think Hiddles would make a great Bond. He’s suave, sexy and can rock a tux!
It’s hard to judge ourselves accurately…isn’t it.
But Kaiser – perhaps these weirdo posh kids at Dragon School actually DO discuss James Bond in the playground! Perhaps 007 is an actual topic of interest to them. I can assure you, on the other hand, the relative merits of Sean Connery and Roger Moore were not discussed in my elementary school playground. The Saturday night TV we discussed was That’s Life! and Casualty and Match of the Day. What with those being the shows that were actually on BBC on a Saturday night in the 80s and 90s and what our parents let us stay up to see. Perhaps the posh kids got a different BBC.
Annoying fantasy anecdote there, LEGS, so tsk at you.
That’s weird, Sixer, because I distinctly remember watching a lot of Bond movies on TV as a kid – I’m 34, so around the same age as Tom.
We didn’t necessarily discuss them in the playground at primary school, but the James Bond Appreciation Society was one of the most popular university social societies, so clearly lots of people in my generation watched them as kids.
You might well have done, KTE. Nobody is saying Bond isn’t popular in Britain.
But you didn’t watch seasons of Bond films on the BBC on a Saturday night because the BBC has never run Bond seasons on a Saturday night, in the 1980s or at any other time. And the chances of 5 year-olds at kindergarten having Bond as their hot topic of conversation in the playground – rather than footballers, cartoons and pop bands – are so vanishing as to be non-existent.
I bet a gazillion pounds to one of Sixlet Minor’s (very) smelly socks that this anecdote did not happen.
We don’t have ‘kindergarten’ here, Sixer. And plenty of very young kids watched James Bond films and played spy games at schools in the 80s. He may have a fuzzy memory about his age or the time the films were shown because it was nearly 30 years ago, but that doesn’t mean he was making it up.
Just because you didn’t do something does not mean that no-one did.
We do if you go to prep school, KTE. You don’t go to prep school until you are 7 or 8. You can call it pre-school if you like, or any other synonym. I have no idea where Tom went before Dragon – does it have an attached pre-school/kindergarten/Montessori? Whatever. Wherever it was he went. Doesn’t matter.
He’s told an anecdote that is patently not true.
Kindly take on this: he just wanted to tell a story that illustrated how important he feels 007 is in the British psyche. The story he told didn’t actually happen but it got his point across and nobody died, so it doesn’t really matter.
Snarky take: he makes up stuff in interviews to give people what he thinks they want to hear/put out a particular impression of himself, so best not to credit much of what he says.
You can take the former and I’ll take the latter!
sixer, all children tend to catalog their memories inaccurately, and if you don’t consciously go through them to place them into the correct order or duration or whatever specific details were skewed, they will always be remembered incorrectly. It happens all the time and to adults too.
For example witness identification of crime suspects tends to be unreliable because their recall of the events tends to be only of certain things and not others, or the recall is mired by an emotional response to the situation like fear or confusion causing them to take inaccurate and insufficient inventory of the events as they were happening.
IIRC Bond films were shown on ITV on Saturday and Sunday afternoons going back to the 80’s. As Sixer says they weren’t on the BBC.
That’s still the case now, the ITV channels have been showing all the films in order recently (Octopussy was on last week).
Minor quibble but I’ve noticed the Tomster gets details like that wrong from time to time (whether it’s because he’s making the story up I don’t know)
So, wait. The Bond films WERE shown on the weekends when he was a kid.
But he’s getting dogged because from a distance of 25+ years he misspoke and said BBC instead of ITV?
C’mon, guys. A little slack here. Just a bit.
🙂
Alternatively, he DOES remeber well and said BBC deliberately for the US audience because he knows most of us have no idea y’all have any other channels.
No, TB. I know we bonded over yodelling and that was super duper lovely nice, but we won’t be bonding (forgive the punning, I can’t help it) over this one.
LEGS has told a very specific story with very specific details. Every one of the details is demonstrably untrue – from the TV channel, through the time of broadcast and being “allowed” to stay up late, to the obsessions of 5 year-old children in the UK during the 80s – no detail is credible. I know this because I was a child in the UK during the 80s and, for TRUE reasons of my own, was intimate with the Saturday night TV schedule, and was even a pupil at an elite private school in the latter half of the decade.
It’s just a nonsense story that he made up. He might have made it up for benign reasons or he might have made it up for mercenary, manipulative reasons. I have no idea. But he still made it up!
The predictability of the comments in this thread has been quite amusing!
Happy Easter, C’b!tches.
Dara, if you’re still checking in… I couldn’t have asked for better weather for my trip. Not one drop of rain for 4 days… it’s an Easter Miracle!
Of course, Tom may have been jet lagged when he did the interview.
He lived in London until he was around 7 years old, so would already have been at school.
Okay, I’m taking a knee on this one, Sixer. There’s too many details (I keep losing track!) and he does seem to have gotten creative. Obviously doesn’t annoy me as much as it does you, but then LOOK AT MY PSEUDONYM hehehe.
And you are a resolute honest person (we ALL know that!) so that your reaction is not only understand but true to yourself.
Can we bond on disagreeing?
😉
Just cuz someone went to a posh school doesn’t mean they can’t have relatable experiences. How narrow minded are you?
Thanks. Just wrote the same…. I don’t get it either….
You´re right!
Tom is posh but he not a member of the Royal family. So he must have had a childhood like any other child , of course with more money, thanks to his hardworking father.
I think Kaiser forget that in 1986 or 1987 , we did not have movies with superheroes. Batman´s movie only came out in 1988 or somethiing.
So all the boys , including my brothers, love Bond’s movies.
Superman? 1978 and 1983?
@TotallyBiased:
Yes, you’re right! And Tom loves Christopher Rreeve
as Superman.
He lacks the masculine energy that makes Bond work for me and I suspect we would end up with a campy Bond ala Roger Moore. I also cant stand his rodent face.
What´s wrong with Roger Moore’s Bond?
His Bond is very 80’s, over the top but still fun.
And I remember when Daniel Craig was cast to the role many people expressed their frustration and anger with choice that the studio made.
Daniel Craig has become the excuse for forcing ill suited actors onto the role now? Daniel was tested many times and by the time he was picked, the producers had settled on a modern Bond that could compete with Bourne and others. The producers didnt just pluck him from thin air, which is what Hiddles superfans are trying to do here. A camp Bond would be unwatchable for todays audiences.
What I ‘m trying to say is that you can never underestimate the ability of a person.
People can surprise you.
And Tom is one of those actors who is not afraid to take on challenges, he is hardworking and I’m sure that he can pulled out.
Tom as Coriolanus suggests he may be ok as Bond, even if I don;t want him to do it for his own sake.
@spidey:
Yes, this and the fact that he is a very versatile actor.
Like you, i don´t want him to be the next Bond because he can do so better.
Naya, I think we all here qualify as the “superfans” you are dragging, and the majority of the comments from folks here have been falling into the “not Bond” category, for a variety of reasons – but you alone might be using the rodent-faced logic, so congratulations on being unique.
If it is any particular group suggesting he could be Bond, it is the average-joe viewers of The Night Manager who are all recent additions to the Hiddleston bandwagon.
p.s. Daniel Craig is my favorite Bond, and I hope he sticks with it a little while longer. Spectre was rubbish, and veered too far into macho, emotionless robot territory for me, but if they can re-create the magic that was Skyfall, where Bond wasn’t invincible and had to out-think rather than out-muscle his opponents on a few occasions, they’ll have my money. I don’t need each successive film to have bigger explosions and more outlandish stunts that what came before, I just want a compelling story that makes sense.
He would definitely be a Campy!Bond, which isn;t the Bond that would interest me. I think it would be a step backwards.
I’m on the last episode of TNM! Interesting show, but I don;t think it proves that Hiddles is a “great” actor, and I don;t think it supports the idea of Hiddles as Bond.
I agree, TNM gives weight to the argument that Hiddles should not be Bond.
Having now watched all of TNM, Olivia Coleman friggin’ stole this show. She should be the next Bond.
That was a much more satisfying ending than the one in the book. I think Coleman deserves the MVP for the series, most definitely.
Oh God, if I hear or read the name Idris Elba again, I will smack my head against the wall… Honestly, what do you see in this guy? I have no clue. I can totally understand people saying that they don’t see Hiddleston as Bond even if I disagree here…. But…. Why degrading him while talking about Elba as if he is the perfect fit which he isn’t. Not for me. Never. And we all know that he won’t play Bond. Not Elba and not Hiddleston. People are talking about Elba as if he is pure sex…good for you, but yes, there are also women out there who don’t see him as the sexiest guy on earth. So why do I have to explain people why I find Hiddleston great but I am not fond of Elba? Could someone explain that to me pleeeaaaaaaase? 😳 and why this Eton speeches again? Yes, he attended that school. And wow he also went to Cambridge. That means that he didn’t have any bad school experiences? Am I overseeing something? I know people who were sent to rich schools and yes, not everything was super great there.
Calm yourself. Idris is also the popular choice among straight guys (see Reddit). Its got nothing to do with being sexy and everything to do with a commanding presence and an inate swagger thats associated with all the great Bonds. Hiddles essence is different, its more eager puppy than alpha dog. Theres nothing wrong with that, its just the wrong energy for this role.
I’m going to come at this from the other angle. I don’t want Tom as Bond as I don’t like the Bond franchise. Admittedly it is less misogynistic and ridiculous gadgetry these days, but I really don’t like the character (Judi Dench as M has been the only highlight for me). I wouldn’t be upset to see the franchise put to bed rather than keep pushing out thin-plotted movies just to keep Bond going.
A video from ISTL premiere in NYC yesterday on Facebook:
“/madeinhollywood/videos/10154003676307769/”
NO