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Author: Ed, Flicks.co.nz January 6th 2012

English actor Tom Hiddleston has been acting since 2001, but will be most familiar to New Zealand audiences for his portrayal of villainous god Loki in last year's superhero blockbuster Thor, and for his portrayal of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald in Woody Allen's acclaimed Midnight In Paris.

Hiddleston's next role is Officer Nicholls in Steven Spielberg's World War One epic War Horse, which opens here on January 12.
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FLICKS: Were you familiar with the play and the book before you started filming and how important was it for you to be?

HIDDLESTON: It was hugely important for me. The first time I heard about the play War Horse was from two very good friends who both work in the theatre but aren’t actors. They told me about it and that, like everybody else, they’d come out in floods of tears. So it always intrigued me. I finally got to see the play. It was extraordinary. It was breathtaking. I thought the play was extraordinarily powerful and very, very moving.

How did you get the part of Officer Nicholls?
I had been shooting Thor in Los Angles and I came back to London for my father’s 70th Birthday. My English agent called me and said, “Look, they’re doing this film and everyone’s being very secretive about it and no one’s saying it's War Horse, but I know it’s War Horse.” I didn’t know who was directing it at the time, but I put myself on tape doing a little scene and the tape went to the casting director. She sent it to America. The next day, I flew back to L.A and about a week later, I got a call from my agent saying, “Steven Spielberg wants to meet you.”

I had to find a day, sometime while I was shooting Thor, to drive over to DreamWorks to sit down in his office. I didn’t have to prepare anything and we sat there and we had a chat. Then we talked about the First World War and he told me the reasons why he was attracted to the project and that he’d always wanted to do something about the First World War but that he’d never found the right story to tell. It was always about finding the story and the horses really solved it for him.

Then he asked me if I rode and I said, “Actually, funnily enough, Steven, I do. I’m all right at it. I’m not like the world’s expert at it, but I’ve been doing some riding on Thor and the man who was in charge of all the horses is a man called Vic Armstrong, who coincidentally was Harrison Ford’s stunt double in the Indiana Jones films.”

Steven proceeded to tell me a story about Vic Armstrong and Raiders of the Lost Ark and then he said he would like me to do the part. I was stunned. It never, ever happens like that in my experience. Usually, you meet on things and then wait a while and then your agents call you. He just offered it to me on the spot across the table. I was blown away.

As an actor, did you do a lot of preparation for your role?

I did a lot of my own research. You just have to find something that helps you work up your imagination. I watched lots of horse movies and war films and I re-read Journey's End. I also watched both versions of The Charge of the Light Brigade, the Errol Flynn one and the Tony Richardson one with David Hemmings and John Gielgud. I watched Seabiscuit, The Horse Whisperer and All Quiet On the Western Front —anything that was even vaguely related to horses or a war movie. Part of the power of this particular movie is that it is being made in real places.

Is that something that you feel is important to you as an actor?

It’s hugely important. Steven [Spielberg] can employ the most talented horsemen and grooms in Britain and they can put together a Cavalry charge with over 100 horses charging a field through a German camp which has been built and recreated for real. I think that’s the most exciting thing, that you’re watching it really happen. We’re not on CGI horses. We’re on the real thing.

How daunting was it to work with swords and the weaponry of World War One?

Working with swords always requires a lot of precision, practice, discipline, care and attention because they’re dangerous. They’re designed to kill, especially working with swords on top of a horse at the same time. It was just practice, practice, practice. I must have done about five weeks of riding every day, four hours a day and pretty much from day one we were riding one-handed. In all of the charges they rode one-handed because their swords were out. It was just about practicing and making sure that we were safe and confident. There’s something about riding and doing any kind of action that means you can’t really fake it. You have to do it for real.

That’s an enormous challenge when, as an actor, you’re given a script and it says, “Captain Nicholls charges across No Man's Land with his sword out on top of a horse.” You think, “Well, that’s going take some work.” In a way, there’s no acting required because you just do it and you train to do it and when the camera is on you, you do it again. But I love all that. I love acquiring new skills and I feel like I’ve learnt so much about horses, about fighting and about myself.

What did you learn about World War I from making War Horse?

There’s a lot that people don’t know about the First World War. If you go to the Imperial War Museum, what’s most documented are the trenches, the mud, the smoke and the horror of trench warfare. It’s glossed over that nine million horses were killed in the course of the First World War in Cavalry charges, pulling hospital trucks, pulling cannons, pulling guns. They were treated as tools, the way we would treat machinery now. They simply weren’t treated as living things. That was the extraordinary hook of Michael Morpurgo’s story and then what Steven Spielberg has done with it.

The British were so ill educated about the advances in German technology that we thought it was the Charge of the Light Brigade all over again. It’s so foolish in retrospect and it’s also so very innocent, the idea that we could charge across No Man’s Land and flash our sabers in the sun and they would be frightened enough to run home. It’s tragic. When I was doing it, Steven gave me the most amazing note. He said he wanted to see my war face. He said, “Give me your war face and the camera is going to move across and as you feel it come up in front of you, I want you to de-age yourself by 20 years. So you’re 29, the camera is coming and then, when you see those machine guns, you’re 9 years old. I want to see the child in you.” I always thought that was one of the most astonishing acting notes I’d ever been given.

What have you learned about horses from this experience?

I’m amazed by the strength of the bond between horses and people. Horses will teach you about who you are much more than you could possibly learn on your own. They can sense fear, arrogance, true confidence, true self-possession and inner peace. In training and all the way through the film, I noticed that whatever I was feeling, the horses would reflect back to me. When I was truly calm, then they were completely relaxed. When you’re slightly nervous and there’s an adrenaline in you, they can sense that and they get excited too. They kind of pick up on whatever you’re feeling.

If you’ve got airs and graces with horses, you’ll have a hard time winning their respect. They know when they’ve got someone losing control on top of them. I learned the hard way in training that when you’re not in control, they’ll let you know pretty quickly that they don’t really want you up there.