Happy Birthday to everyone's favourite stage actor, screen star and Norse demi-god supervillain! To celebrate, we've assembled a selection of the moments that made the world fall in love with Tom Hiddleston. Whether that's matey platonic love - or a slightly less pure passion…
1. SUITED UP
This is your baseline Hiddleston: the sort of impeccably dressed, well-mannered and friendly sort you're happy to see at movie premieres all over.
2. CASUAL HIDDLESTON
He also looks excellent without the jacket.
3. A GEEK TRINITY
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Warning: do not look at this picture while operating heavy machinery. Can caused unexpected swooning from sheer favourite-actor overload.
4. ALL THIS, AND HE CAN DANCE
The 'dancing Hiddleston' crops up frequently at public appearances, where his funky stylings have the capacity to delight and horrify in equal measure.
5. LOKI VS. KINDERGARTENERS
What's more adorable than a ruthless megalomaniac? How about a ruthless megalomaniac who pushes tiny children around? This really shouldn't be charming – and yet here we are.
6. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
Hiddleston, of course, played The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald in Woody Allen's likeable time-travel comedy. And if you are thinking, "No man alive should look that good with that hairstyle," you are correct.
7. CAPTAIN LOKI?
Chris Evans made a tiny cameo in Thor: The Dark World as Loki-pretending-to-be-Captain-America. But in order to ensure that Evans got the body language right, Hiddleston insisted that he needed to try on the costume. Professionalism that borders on perfectionism... or a chance to live out a childhood dream? We wouldn't dream of speculating.
8. HORSING AROUND
Hiddleston made his way to the A-list via a series of period dramas - because why waste his capacity to rock a uniform or high collar? So here he is in Steven Spielberg's War Horse as part of the doomed World War I office class, cuddling the titular quadruped.
9. ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH
Continuing the horse theme, here's Hiddleston as Henry V in The Hollow Crown. If you like a bit of Shakespearean verse with your cheekbones, look no further.
10. ICE BUCKET AHOY!
Hiddleston's early Ice Bucket challenge was one of the key moments that got the ball rolling on this charity record-breaker, which ultimately raised well over $100m to combat ALS. We're sure his wet t-shirt had nothing to do with it.
11. CONQUERING COMIC-CON
In 2013, Tom Hiddleston took the stage at San Diego Comic-Con's Hall H, the world's largest annual gathering of geeks, in character and costume as Loki. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to attend an old time church revival, wonder no more.
12. VAMPIRE ROMANCE
Directed by Jim Jarmusch and starring Tilda Swinton and Hiddleston as vampire ex-lovers, Only Lovers Left Alive is arguably the coolest thing ever to have happened on Earth. Look at them! They're actually pained by how unbearably cool they are.
13. PEAK FORM
Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro's Gothic thriller last year, saw Hiddleston play Sir Thomas Sharpe, a 19th century gentleman who looks good in a high collar but who may be mad, bad and dangerous to know…
14. ON THE RISE
Hiddleston's next film sees him cavorting with stewardesses, sunbathing nude and getting covered in paint. And then it gets weird - dog-eatingly weird…
15. WAIT FOR IT
Have you read this all already? Tsk tsk - sounds like you need to learn about 'delayed gratification'.





















