Everyone’s favorite trickster god, Tom Hiddleston, is back in the spotlight this weekend, this time for roles that he himself has never played. While a guest on BBC‘s The Graham Norton Show, Hiddleston was sharing the big red couch with Oscar winners Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, and Kenneth Branagh. Graham asked De Niro whether or not he enjoyed impressions done of himself by other people. De Niro responded in kind, saying that he does enjoy them, in fact, and particularly when they’re really good impressions. This set-up, of course, was a segue into chiding Tom to bust out his impressions of De Niro (and Owen Wilson, and Al Pacino, and Christopher Walken, because why not?) for the amusement of the guests on the couch and the viewers at home.
The impression game led Tom into a wandering tangent about the film Heat — which starred De Niro and Pacino — and the merits of the scene in which the two leads meet in the middle of the film, and how both it and the movie itself were modern standards in film writing and direction. Comparing the pacing and the writing of the dialogue to a match of singles tennis, Hiddleston simply could not tear himself away from the chance to gush over the piece of cinema that had so clearly inspired him as an actor, especially to one of the two actors who performed it.
I have to say, each of Tom’s impressions impressed me personally, but it’s hard for me to even consider another Owen Wilson impression after Saturday Night Live‘s amazing Wes Anderson sendup, The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders. I think the title alone won half the battle for Edward Norton in that sketch.
Robert De Niro was appearing with Anne Hathaway to promote their film The Intern, while Tom Hiddleston was there to promote his forthcoming Guillermo del Toro-directed Crimson Peak.
How much more does Tom Hiddleston’s vocal acrobatics and fanboying endear him to you, folks? Can you even handle it? Sound off below.
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Image: The Graham Norton Show
