“Deal with rejection because no matter what you’re trying to achieve, if you can’t do that, then you will likely give up.” — Tom Hiddleston
English actor and producer Tom Hiddleston’s wide-ranging career includes many Shakespearean roles, the Marvel antihero Loki, the country music legend Hank Williams, and a Golden Globe-winning performance in The Night Manager television series.
In this Top 10 Rules for Success video from YouTuber Evan Carmichael, Hiddleston discusses several obstacles he’s encountered throughout his acting journey. The actor elaborates on his experiences with being too careful during auditions, dealing with rejection, learning to be true to himself and connecting with others through his work.
Hiddleston studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Graduating in 2005, he soon became an award-winning theater actor. However, the movie star’s career breakthrough came in 2011 when he was cast as the legendary Nordic god of mischief, Loki, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thor alongside Chris Hemsworth, who played the titular character.
Around the same time, he was also cast in significant roles in two films which went on to be nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Motion Picture of the Year: the fantasy comedy Midnight in Paris portraying fiction writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and Steven Spielberg’s War Horse playing Captain James Nicholls.
Before Thor: Tom Hiddleston’s Hard Times
But before landing those roles, the Marvel Cinematic Universe actor experienced years of frustration, feeling as though he was wasting time and fearing he was inauthentic and didn’t have a worthwhile voice.
“Everything is possible and nothing is guaranteed,” Hiddleston said. “If you’re lucky enough you have an agent and you start auditioning, and they send you everything from period drama to [guest starring in the long-running medical drama] ‘Casualty’ to dairy milk commercials.”
Hiddleston discussed being thrown into the deep end of the business and thrown into the deep end, where “there’s no time for doubt or failure—except routinely, that’s what happens to all of us.”
“I perhaps was too careful in auditioning and I would always get close to landing roles and to booking jobs, and I would never quite get there,” he said. “I mean, this is a universal experience for all creative people, certainly actors, is the constant rejection at the beginning. And you have to get used to it and you have to get thick-skinned about it.”
Navigating Rejection on the Road to Success
Hiddleston admits he was taking the rejection personally, and soon enough he found himself growing exhausted from it all before coming to a realization. “I thought, ‘Well, no one’s going to help me get there; the only person who can do this is me.” Hiddleston started preparing for auditions in a different way because he “could feel time sliding away and I wasn’t getting on with life; I just was sort of stuck in this rut of neither acting nor doing anything else.” Once he made these adjustment, he began to book more roles.
In 2016, Hiddleston starred in and was an executive producer of the AMC / BBC limited series The Night Manager, based on the espionage and detective novel of the same name by John Le Carre. Hiddleston took home a Golden Globe Award for best actor in a miniseries or television film for his portrayal of the luxury hotel night manager and former British soldier Jonathan Pine.
He also reprised his role as Loki in the Marvel Studios limited series centered on the character which aired on Disney+ for two seasons.
Hiddleston is eager to share his personal stories in hopes of encouraging others. He says, “Deal with rejection because no matter what you’re trying to achieve, if you can’t do that, then you will likely give up.”
The Marvel Studios actor also advises actors to be on time. “Never underestimate the importance of punctuality,” he says, adding that performers prepare for their auditions. “You can never be over-prepared. And be true to yourself. If you have something that you want to say, that you’ve been burning to say, don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t say it.”
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