Marvel’s makeup wizards had to drain the glow out of normally ruddy, golden-haired Tom Hiddleston’s skin so he could play Loki, which somehow only served to make the much-beloved villain one thousand times more sexual and savage, not unlike a white lion or an albino alligator wearing a really slick wig. Thanks to Hiddleston’s onscreen prowling, preening, and pontificating, Loki has become an indispensable character in the Marvel universe, and, according to all the Internet gifs, an ashen-skinned sex symbol.
In a recent, go-see-my-movie, America interview with Entertainment Weekly, Hiddleston was asked whether he thought that his Loki had become something of a “sexy beast.” Well, Tom? Is “deathly pallor” the new washboard stomach? Are we in the midst of a craze for anemic sex symbols? Hilddleston, holding a dozen kittens in one hand and a bottle of chilled champagne in another, answered thusly:
I don’t know because it’s not a part of the conscious construction. I take relish in playing him. I think there’s a physical self-possession about him, a self-acceptance. Of course I’ve been very exacting about his physicality. You know, I was born with very blonde, curly hair, and a mixture of Scottish and English genes, and my complexion is very ruddy and healthy. In making him with this raven black hair and blanching my face of all color, it changes my features. Suddenly my blue eyes look a lot bluer, which lends a severity to my face. And even my own smile has a distorted menace to it. Whatever comes through me naturally is distorted. It’s almost like a filter on a light.
When you read something like this, you realize D.H Lawrence really was way too far ahead of his time.
[EW]
Image via Getty, Jason Merritt