Tom Hiddleston reveals childhood Indiana Jones inspiration

Hollywood superstar Tom Hiddleston's love of movies began when as a child he pretended to be Indiana Jones.

The actor, 35, is now one of the world's most in demand stars, as he plays villainous Loki in the Marvel superhero movies and is British bookmakers' favourite to replace Daniel Craig as James Bond.

However, Tom admits that as a child there was one part he especially wanted - Harrison Ford's role as adventure loving archaeologist Indiana Jones.

"I spent my childhood running around my parents' living room pretending to be Harrison Ford on a horse, wearing a hat, with the Indiana Jones theme tune playing in the background," he tells Britain's Daily Mail newspaper.

But with Harrison still going strong in the role aged 73 - with a fifth Indiana Jones movie featuring the movie veteran being announced by Disney bosses in March (16), he may have to settle for his role as god-like mischief-maker Loki.

And Tom, who will return as Loki next year in Thor: Ragnarok, says that when he got a little older, it was villainous characters who he loved seeing on screen, adding, "When I was a teenager I loved watching Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard or Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Batman."

The movie hunk's early acting career was mostly spent on stage, although he did not always seem destined to be the star. He admits that when at prestigious British independent educational establishment Eton, he was upstaged in school productions by another schoolmate who would go on to great things, Eddie Redmayne.

"Eddie and I are very good friends still," he explains. "We've actually been fellow actors for 20 years now. There was a production of E.M. Forster's A Passage To India at school. I had a small part in the chorus and he had one of the leading roles, and one of my jobs was to play the right leg of an elephant he was riding on, which I still remind him of!"

The big break that would eventually take Tom to Hollywood came when Kenneth Branagh, who would go on to direct the first Thor film, saw him in a production of the William Shakespeare play Othello.

"I was in a production of Othello and Ken Branagh, being the Shakespearean he is, came to see it," the British star says. "He said he'd like to work with me, so we did a radio play, and then a Chekhov play in the West End, and then he cast me to play his number two in the TV series Wallander.

"When I first came to Los Angeles, I was auditioning for everything, big movies, small movies, superhero movies," he adds. "Ken cast me as Loki in Thor. Bizarrely enough, Joss Whedon (The Avengers director), who had also seen that Othello production, had loved it so much that he wrote me a very good part for Loki in The Avengers."