Westminster-born actor Tom Hiddleston is reportedly set to play the most iconic country singer of all time. Hiddleston, best known for portraying the supervillain Loki in The Avengers, will take the role of Hank Williams in an upcoming biopic.
According to Deadline, Hiddleston will not just learn Williams' Alabama accent but master his music too. Unlike with Andre 3000's recent turn as Jimi Hendrix, producers have already secured the rights to several legendary Williams songs, including Your Cheatin' Heart, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, and Hey Good Lookin'.
Titled I Saw The Light, the movie is based on Colin Escott, George Merritt and William MacEwen's 1994 book, Hank Williams: The Biography. Director Marc Abraham adapted the screenplay himself and he aims to begin shooting in Louisiana this October.
After news of the casting emerged on Thursday night, Hiddleston posted a photograph of himself as Williams, posing with cowboy boots, hat and acoustic guitar.
Unfortunately, not everyone is impressed with the idea of a British actor playing one of America's most iconic musicians. "I guess there is nothing quintessentially American anymore," complained a Variety-reading country fan. "[I] look forward to a movie about Burt Reynolds starring Kenneth Branagh."
Besides his role as Loki in The Avengers and Thor, Hiddleston's other recent star turns include a vampire rocker in Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, and King Henry V in the BBC Two Shakespeare series The Hollow Crown. He also played Minnesota-born writer F Scott Fitzgerald in Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris.
Williams was only 29 when he died in 1953 - a victim of his alcoholism and drug abuse. Already, he had become one of the most beloved artists of the American South, with eight No 1 country singles and many more that were becoming known as classics. The so-called "King of the Hillbillies" received a posthumous Pulitzer prize in 2010, awarded in recognition for his "pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force".
