Tom Hiddleston draws us in by showing how much effort goes into keeping a reaction private. We like him best when a director trusts his restraint, as Susanne Bier does in The Night Manager.
Fi1m perspective
In The Night Manager (2016), Jonathan Pine holds back a reaction while someone else is watching, and Hiddleston makes that small effort worth our attention. There is charm here, but little insistence that we admire it. Susanne Bier gives him time to be still, which lets us believe both in Pine’s decency and in his ability to manage complicated company. It is an assured performance in a familiar sort of spy thriller, and a good place to start with an actor whose composure repays close attention.
Before Pine, Joanna Hogg’s Archipelago (2010) gave him an early independent lead as Edward. Kenneth Branagh’s Thor (2011) brought his breakthrough as Loki, and Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015) placed him in gothic period drama as Sir Thomas Sharpe. Repeated Marvel appearances and the television series Loki, which began in 2021, have made the breakthrough role a long commitment. The useful quality across this work is his ability to suggest vulnerability beneath an elegant, composed exterior. We would welcome more opportunities to see it away from Loki.
His scenes with Hugh Laurie in The Night Manager explain why. Laurie’s arms dealer Richard Roper is affable enough to make Pine’s self-control feel necessary rather than merely well mannered. We felt uneasy when Roper smiled, because Laurie made him seem entirely comfortable with what he sells. Hiddleston does not try to match that ease; his reserved charm gives the encounter two distinct people to watch. Even when the plot is predictable, their careful attention to one another is absorbing.
The reservation is with what the programme asks that performance to carry. Pine’s decency is persuasive, but the moral complications around him are disappointingly slight, and an actor’s suggestion of private difficulty cannot supply what the writing leaves out. That limits the drama without making Hiddleston’s work any less worth watching. Bier gets something valuable from him by allowing a reaction to stay small instead of demanding that every feeling announce itself. Start with her thriller for the pleasure of watching him opposite Laurie; try Archipelago next if Loki has become too familiar.
Biography
Thomas William Hiddleston is an English actor. He was born on 9 February 1981 in Westminster, London.
Hiddleston trained as an actor and began his career in theatre, appearing in West End productions including Cymbeline (2007), for which he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Newcomer in a Play. His early film roles included Joanna Hogg's Unrelated (2007) and Archipelago (2010).
He gained international recognition for portraying Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films beginning with Thor (2011). On television, he starred as Jonathan Pine in the series The Night Manager (2016), for which he received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. Other notable credits include Midnight in Paris (2011), Kong: Skull Island (2017) and the Disney+ series Loki (2021).
