{"id":425063,"date":"2026-01-20T08:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T08:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/425063\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T08:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T08:24:09","slug":"tom-hiddleston-says-tim-burtons-batman-inspired-him-to-play-loki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/425063\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Hiddleston says Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ inspired him to play Loki"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Hiddleston<\/a> has revealed it was actually a DC supervillain who inspired his Marvel career.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Golden Globe-winning actor, who has starred as Loki across multiple Marvel films and television shows over the last 15 years, explained that he likely wouldn\u2019t have played everyone\u2019s favorite God of Mischief had he not watched Tim Burton\u2019s Batman.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTruthfully, I don\u2019t think I would\u2019ve played Loki without that film,\u201d Hiddleston said on a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused<\/a> podcast. \u201cI think the way Jack Nicholson played the Joker was so\u2026 at the time in my life when I saw it, it made such an impact on my imagination.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Tom Hiddleston as Loki.
\nMarvel Studios<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cI understood he was the villain, but he was having such a good time \u2014\u00a0that could describe somebody else I know \u2014\u00a0and he was so charismatic and so inventive and so free.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to credit Nicholson with being a huge inspiration behind his take on Loki when first stepping into the role. \u201cI think, probably, when I came to play Loki for the first film, I consciously carried Jack Nicholson in mind,\u201d he added.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Hiddleston previously praised Nicholson\u2019s Joker in a 2013 interview with Entertainment Weekly all about the classic villains who inspired his complicated character.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m standing on the shoulders of the villains I loved as a child and take my hat off to,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cJack Nicholson as The Joker in Tim Burton\u2019s\u00a0Batman, and I bow even lower for Alan Rickman in\u00a0Die Hard\u00a0and James Mason in\u00a0North by Northwest. I mean, Alan Rickman, particularly in that film, was having such a good time and was so likeable.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cI guess it\u2019s in my make up as a fan, as someone who loved movies as a child. I loved villains who enjoyed themselves.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with\u00a0our\u00a0EW Dispatch newsletter<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

While speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Hiddleston explained that he and Thor director Kenneth Branagh would often experiment on the set of the first film by shooting multiple versions of Loki\u2019s scenes in the style of different actors like Nicholson.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did the Peter O\u2019Toole take, which wasn\u2019t an impersonation of Peter O\u2019Toole but it was a tribute to his sincerity and vulnerability in films like The Lion in Winter,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then a Jack Nicholson take, where I was having the most fun in the room. And then a Clint Eastwood take, where whatever I was feeling would be hidden deep within me and you wouldn\u2019t be able to see it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

He explained the multiple versions gave Branagh \u201cdifferent flavors of things in the edit\u201d to properly showcase Loki\u2019s multi-faceted personality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hiddleston is next set to return to the MCU in Avengers: Doomsday. His character was last seen at the end of Loki season 2, where he became the God of Time and is currently tasked with holding the entire multiverse together. No pressure!<\/p>\n

Watch Hiddleston discuss Batman and Loki in the clip above.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Hiddleston has revealed it was actually a DC supervillain who inspired his Marvel career.\u00a0 The Golden Globe-winning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-425063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}