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From Elephant Leg to Loki: Hiddleston’s Hilarious School Play Revelation
In a delightful and candid segment on The Graham Norton Show, actor Tom Hiddleston reminisced about his early, humble acting days. He revealed that he shared the stage at an all-boys school with future Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne in a production of E.M. Forster’s classic, A Passage to India. The story, filled with humor, highlighted the unexpected beginnings of two massive Hollywood stars.
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Starring Role vs. Supporting Limb
Hiddleston explained that Redmayne, already showing immense talent even then, took on the starring role as the female lead in the play. “He was a great talent, even then. He was a huge star,” Hiddleston recalled. The play featured a memorable scene involving an expedition to the Marabar Caves by elephant, and that is where Hiddleston’s unique role came in—or rather, lumbered in.
“I’m delighted to reveal that I played the front right leg of the elephant that Eddie was riding on,” Hiddleston said with a laugh. He described how four boys, including himself, formed the elephant’s body. They held up a table topped with a cushion and covered it with a tablecloth to hide their faces. Redmayne sat atop this makeshift pachyderm, dressed as the female character.
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Norton Quips and Shared Stage Absurdity
The host, Graham Norton, and fellow guests erupted in laughter at the image. Norton quipped about the posh nature of the school putting on such a lengthy and profound play like A Passage to India. Hiddleston agreed it was “very long,” adding to the absurdity of the setup. Another guest humorously imagined the scene: “Just sitting there thinking, ‘I haven’t had a drink, we’re at school, we’re carrying some boy dressed as a girl on top of a table.'”
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Faces Too ‘Extraordinary’
The conversation briefly shifted to actress Ruth Wilson, who shared a related industry anecdote. She revealed she was once considered for a role opposite Redmayne but was passed over because their faces were deemed “too extraordinary” to appear together on screen. “They said that our faces are too both of them are too extraordinary to be opposite each other on a on one frame,” Wilson explained.
Hiddleston’s lighthearted tale from his school days underscores the unexpected paths that lead to stardom. From forming the leg of a school play elephant to starring in global blockbusters, it’s a humorous reminder that even the biggest names in acting start somewhere—sometimes quite literally at the bottom.