The actor Tom Hiddleston is an Arsenal fan. Nothing wrong with that, of course. The club is a magnet to the north London cognoscenti, the likes of Keir Starmer. One more half-famous face is neither here nor there. No harm done. What is objectionable, though, is Hiddleston’s insistence on channeling his inner Shakespeare in homage to Arsenal on social media. Lacking all self-awareness and residing far up his own fundament (a well-known failing of actors more generally), our Tom has taken to posting bizarre motivational videos, urging Arsenal on to greater and greater glory.
Fortunate indeed are those who have not seen his peroration urging Arsenal on, just ahead of their recent Champions League final last month. The background footage features moody close-ups of Arsenal stars, with Hiddleston, in full actorly flow, saying things such as: ‘You can you can feel it now, the cacophony before kick off…’ Well, not really. The only feeling the video prompts is a desire to run screaming. Undeterred, our Tom goes on: ‘Here we are, exactly where we wanted to be…’ Hiddleston seems to be sitting in the team dressing room but it could just as easily be his bathroom. Who knows? The hammy nonsense doesn’t end there: ‘Together, over land and sea, all of us have done our part. Unbeaten. Unbowed. Dominant.’ Perhaps most ludicrous of all, amid admittedly stiff competition, was Hiddleston intimating in sonorous tones that all this is ‘rare air’. More like hot air, I would suggest. No surprise, of course, that Arsenal went on to lose the Champions League final to PSG.
This didn’t stop Hiddleston from turning his unwanted attentions to the England team, ahead of their recent match against Croatia at the World Cup. In video for the Athletic, grandiosely captioned ‘Tom Hiddleston’s message for England’, he unloads more motivational spiel on the unsuspecting England team: ‘Play with joy. We believe in you. We love you for who you are and what you do. You’ve got this.’ FFS, not again Tom, must be the only sensible reaction. Button it, mate, please. There is more: ‘Now set the teeth. Stretch the nostril. Hold the breath hard. And imitate the action of the tiger. You got this.’ What does this even mean? The video ends with a self-satisfied smile from the great actor.
It all feels a little desperate, in a ‘look at me’ kind of way. Maybe Hiddleston has spent too much time between acting jobs, maybe he is mourning missing out on being the next James Bond. Perhaps, deep down, he hankers for a role in the dressing room with Arsenal and England, as some sort of mascot with a Shakespearean bent. After all, football has been known to do strange things to people, not least actors and celebrities. The Hollywood star Anne Hathaway (who has a new film out, don’t you know?) was recently all over social media singing about her love for the Gunners and congratulating their players. She even name checked Declan Rice twice, prompting the uneasy suspicion that she might struggle to name all of Arsenal’s first XI.
It’s all so cringeworthy. Why, oh why, bother? The answer can only be the obvious one: what matters most to celebs is attention. In the world of the famous, being out of the public eye is an experience akin to death. Who can forget, for example, the time when a group of celebrities decided to unleash their own cover version of the John Lennon classic ‘Imagine’ during the Covid pandemic? Do check it out on YouTube in all its hideous self-absorption and narcissistic hideousness. It amounted to a worldwide scream for attention, even in a world consumed by death and suffering. Mr Hiddleston, self-appointed motivator-in-chief to Arsenal and England, is more or less in the same boat, craving to be noticed and heard. It might be an idea for him to stick to acting, which he knows something about, and leave the football motivational talk to the pundits who at least have some professional insights.
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