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Chris Hemsworth, Thor, 2010. After making the BBC Wallander series together, “Hiddles” was appearing with Kenneth Branagh on-stage in Uncle Vanya when the news broke about Ken succeeding Matthew Vaughn, Sam Raimi and others as Thor director. Tom later jumped into Ken’s dressing room wielding an big plastic container, shouting “Come on, Ken, what do you think!?” “You never know, darling,” laughed Ken. “Stranger things have happened.” Within a couple of months, Tom title-tested and was preferred as Loki (for the next Marvel production, The Avengers, as well). Also in contention were: the future Loki, RoboCop, Tarzan and Magic Mike: Hiddleston, Joel Kinnaman, Alexander Skarsgård, Channing Tatum. Plus the baby brother Liam Hemsworth, Charlie Hunnam, Paul Levesque, Tyler Mane, Brad Pitt. Ken saw Thor as a Norse comic-book twist on his own movie breakthrough, Henry V, while Tom said Loki was “a nastier version, of King Lear‘s Edmund.”
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Colin Farrell, Winter’s Tale, 2012. Auteur Akiva Goldman didn’t stray far fom the fantasy brigade for his reincarnation romance. Up for the Manhattan burglar falling for the heiress who dies in his arms were Hiddleston (Loki in Thor), Luke Evans (Bard in The Hobbit), Garrett Tron Hedlund, Liam Hemsworth from Hunger Games, Aaron Kick-Ass Taylor-Johnson and Benjamin Walker aka Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Long before all those, even Farrell had been Bullseye in Daredevil, circa 2002.
- Jack Huston, Ben-Hur, 2015. They didn’t teach chariot-tracing at Eton…! Tom declined the fifth re-make since 1925 of the Biblical epic in order to help reboot a certain gorilla in Kong: Skull Island. Huston is the talented grandson of John, great-grandson of Walter and completely lost here. Hiddleston was nicknamed Hiddlebum because of his 2016 sex scene with Elizabeth Debicki in in (and as) The Night Manager.
- Bill Skarsgård, It, 2016. There was talk over seven years about re-hashing the mini-series of 1990 – when Stellan Skarsgård’s son/Alexander Tarzan Skarsgård’s brother was born. Among his rivals for Pennywise, Stephen King’s shape-shifting horror clown, were the too obvious Jim Carrey, Tim Curry (no, no, he’d already done It on TV), Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Jackie Earle Haley. Plus Hiddleston, Richard Armitage, Kirk Acevedo (of Oz), Paul Giamatti, Doug Jones, Ben Mendelsohn (argued over money), Will Poulter (bad scheduling), Channing Tatum, Hugo Weaving… even Tilda Swinton. Only Bill Skarsgård could produce both a child-like and creepy-like Pennywise. “It’s beyond even a sociopath, because he’s not even human. He’s not even a clown… [that’s] a manifestation of the children’s imaginations, so there’s something child-like about that.” Hence, It: Chapter Two, 2019
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 4