Giving up movie stardom was Tom Hiddleston’s smartest career move

To date, the career of Tom Hiddleston has been defined, largely, by two roles: the one he got, and the one he didn’t. The first of these – Loki, the machiavellian god of mischief in Marvel’s Thor – was the part that made his name, hoisting him to stardom in the early 2010s. Prim, well-spoken and angularly handsome, Hiddleston quickly became one of the de facto frontrunners to take over from Daniel Craig as the next James Bond. The part never materialised, and Hiddleston himself seemed to de-materialise: taking what he described as “a moment of consideration”, the London-born thespian retreated from Hollywood almost entirely.

It has, in fact, been eight years since you could last walk into a cinema and watch Hiddleston play anyone other than Loki (if you don’t count 2018’s middling Aardman animation Early Man, to which Hiddleston lent his voice). Not since the pulpy monster movie Kong: Skull Island (2017) has Hiddleston fronted a film, though he did return as Loki in two Avengers movies and the post-credits scene of 2023’s dismal Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. In the interim, he’s been on stage – most recently in a production of Much Ado About Nothing at Drury Lane this year – and on TV, narrating nature documentaries and appearing in Loki on Disney+. Hiddleston’s starring role in the new Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck, meekly tipped as an awards season hopeful, is therefore something of a comeback. But where he goes from here isn’t necessarily clear.

The Life of Chuck lives in the sentimental half of King’s oeuvre – more in the vein of The Green Mile or Stand By Me than of his best-known horror classics, such as The Shining or It. Hiddleston plays Charles “Chuck” Krantz, an accountant defined by his love of dancing, whose death might just herald the end of the universe. Warmer reviews have hailed the film as “life-affirming”; others, including that of The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey, have dismissed it as treacly hogwash.

It’s funny, in a way, that The Life of Chuck arrives as speculation over the next Bond begins to ramp up, following Amazon’s takeover of the franchise earlier this year. Like several of the actors widely touted for the role – most notably his Thor co-star Idris Elba – Hiddleston, now 44, has simply aged out of candidacy. Whether he’d have been the right fit for 007 is unclear. He certainly fits the profile – he has about him that erudite, old-money musk that’s always clung to Ian Fleming’s creation. (Hiddleston was boarding-school educated, and is the great-grandson of a navy vice-admiral.) The 2016 BBC One spy thriller The Night Manager was, for many, proof enough that Hiddleston was the perfect Bond-in-waiting.

Though the window to apply for a licence to kill has now seemingly passed, Hiddleston can probably take a quantum of solace in the fact that he would, in truth, have been a roundly unexciting pick for Bond. It’s not that he can’t do a character like Bond – it’s that we already know he can. The debonair but emotionally distant spy would have brought out Hiddleston’s least interesting qualities on screen. We’re all too familiar with his obsidian brittleness; what about something altogether more human? Hiddleston may well have asked himself the same question – hence his involvement in The Life of Chuck, a film that, for better or worse, is positively swimming in sentiment.

In a sense, the role of Bond represents something bigger – the sort of conventional movie-star career that Hiddleston once flirted with. His first film roles were resoundingly un-Hollywood: acclaimed British indies Unrelated and Archipelago, directed by future The Souvenir filmmaker Joanna Hogg. The first Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh and released in 2011, was a big, effects-heavy blockbuster. Loki, though, positioned as the film’s villain, was more of a showcase for Hiddleston’s shrewd character work than the launch of any replicable star persona.

After Thor, Hiddleston gravitated towards mid-budget projects by renowned filmmakers: Steven Spielberg (War Horse), Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris), Jim Jarmusch (Only Lovers Left Alive), Guillermo del Toro (Crimson Peak) and Ben Wheatley (High-Rise) among them. A starring role in the Hank Williams biopic I Saw the Light was mooted for the Oscars – until it came out, to a muted reception. It was around this time, in 2016, that Hiddleston embarked on a short-lived but aggressively reported-on romance with Taylor Swift. The partnership – dubbed “Hiddleswift” on social media and in the press – was exactly the sort of high-profile courtship that you might expect from an actor destined for the mainstream.

Dancing man: Hiddleston in ‘The Life of Chuck’ (Neon)

Then came Kong: Skull Island, to date Hiddleston’s sole attempt to establish himself as the leading man in an action film. (Brie Larson, another Marvel star, was his co-lead.) The film, which resituated the famous oversized ape within the context of the Vietnam war, was a commercial success, but received mixed reviews. Rather than being the start of a new chapter, it turned out, instead, to be the end of one: Hiddleston stepped back from film work soon afterwards. Except, of course, for more Marvel films.

Sometimes, when actors keep returning to long-running franchises, there is a smack of desperation about it. Hiddleston’s continued willingness to reprise the role of Loki – despite the character being killed off on two separate occasions – has never truly felt like this. Rather, it speaks to something more commendable: a recognition that, sometimes, you do have to dance with the one who brung you. Loki made Hiddleston’s name, and, when you watch him speak about the role in interviews, it’s clear that he takes the part utterly seriously.

It’s a good job, too, because there’s more where that came from: Hiddleston is one of dozens of actors lined up for the forthcoming Marvel sequel Avengers: Doomsday. Next year, he’ll also star in Tenzing, in which he’ll play Everest-scaler Edmund Hillary. It’s hard to predict just where his career will go from there; what sort of actor he’ll try to become. He may be slowly closing the door on popcorn movie stardom – but behind the next door lies something far more worthwhile.

‘The Life of Chuck’ is in cinemas now