Tom Hiddleston Is More Than His YouTube Clips

One of the internet's favorite imaginary boyfriends also happens to be a very good actor.

- Jada Yuan

Tom Hiddleston may never be able to experience hotels the same way again. To study for the role of Jonathan Pine, a soldier turned hotelier turned spy, in the BBC miniseries of John le Carré’s The Night Manager (now appearing Stateside on AMC), he went deep undercover in the luxury-service trade, and now he can’t unlearn what he knows. “All the staff have a profile on me that they can access,” he says, looking around the restaurant at New York’s Crosby Street Hotel, where we’re having lunch. No one in uniform has shown any sign of recognizing the debonair Brit across the table from me as the supervillain Loki from the Thor movies, or from the many, many fan-made YouTube mash-ups of his stellar dance moves, but Hiddleston insists it’s an illusion and not contingent on fame. “They have my room number; they probably have a photograph somewhere,” he says, leaning in conspiratorially. “The guy standing over there probably knows I have two sisters and I live in London. They probably know how many times I’ve stayed here before, what my favorite drink is. This is a theater, and we are being stage-managed. Truly.”

Hiddleston actually got to do some of that stage-managing himself while working an overnight shift at the Rosewood London hotel during prep for the series. “Under the cover of night, I was invisible, and then at breakfast time, people were like, ‘Hang on, are you that actor?’ ” he says. “I would say, ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’ ”