So Tom, how did you make that sex scene so SIZZLING? Tom Hiddleston on his steamy Night Manager clinch, being pals with Prince William - and those rumours he'll be 007

Tom Hiddleston is now asked everywhere he goes if he is going to be the next James Bond

For the past three months, everywhere Tom Hiddleston has gone, he’s been asked the same question: are you going to be the next James Bond? Thus far, he’s been able to bat the issue aside with his trademark self-deprecating charm, saying simply: ‘I don’t know because nobody’s talked to me about it. The position isn’t vacant as far as I am aware.’

He’s maintained all along that the only thing he’s in the running for is a brisk jog around London’s Regent’s Park, which he does regularly, incognito in a blue baseball cap and earphones.

But a story that emerged yesterday changed everything. Daniel Craig has reportedly told MGM studio bosses he is ‘done’ playing Bond, according to Hollywood insiders. He’s apparently even turned down a £68 million, two-movie offer to reprise the role — which has already earned him £38 million since taking over from Pierce Brosnan in 2005.

Craig had sparked resignation rumours earlier this year when he said he’d rather slash his wrists than play Bond again, adding: ‘I have a life to get on with.’ Hiddleston, with his chiselled good looks, slightly ruthless demeanour and — most importantly — ability to wear a sharp suit under stress, was immediately in contention, ahead of names including Damian Lewis and Idris Elba.

Last week, he was reportedly spotted deep in conversation with Skyfall and Spectre director Sam Mendes and Bond co-producer Barbara Broccoli. This was followed by a flurry of bets being placed on him being the next 007, with bookmakers Coral eventually suspending betting.

Whatever the truth of the matter is, the whole issue has been an embarrassment to the actor. When he flew into Los Angeles last month for the U.S. premiere of BBC spy thriller The Night Manager, he complained that James Bond was the only thing he was being asked about.

‘It’s a weird thing to have to deal with,’ he tells me when we meet for tea in Beverly Hills. ‘I’m having unreal conversations with people about this because I don’t know where the rumours have sprung from.

‘It’s difficult, because everyone has very strong opinions about Bond, and who should play him. My name is just an idea in people’s minds, yet it’s becoming overwhelming. I have no power to stop it, but I wish I could convince everyone that the whole thing is news to me.’

Looking laid-back in a dark blue open-necked polo shirt over casual blue jeans, there is something ineffably Thirties about Tom Hiddleston.

It’s partly the crisply waving light brown hair swept back from the clean-cut features, and the steady deep-set eyes; partly the impeccable manners and low-key, modest charm.

Meeting him in person is like having polite chit-chat with an amiable relative of Lord Peter Wimsey — Dorothy L. Sayers’ fictional Edwardian dilettante turned detective — rather than with a thoroughly modern 35-year-old who has fuelled fantasies for red-blooded women everywhere.

That’s especially since the steamy scene in the The Night Manager, where he and co-star Elizabeth Debicki made passionate love up against a wall, which must rank as one of TV’s sexiest moments.

They looked like they were playing it for real — so were they? He dodges the question with a laugh. ‘Do you always ask people about how they make love? OK. Listen, the scene was an initiation of intimacy, and that is how Susanne Bier, the director, wanted it played.

‘It was interesting working with her. She’s Danish, and the difference between her and an English director is that she’s incredibly direct about what she wants.

Hiddleston's name was on the tip of everyone's tongue after he proved his secret agent credentials with his role in The Night Manager (pictured), and steamy scenes with his top off lit up social media 

‘She would say, routinely, “I think we should go again — it’s not sexy enough.” And an English director would probably say the same thing, but they would preface it with lots of lovely adjectives — “Lovely, love what you’re doing, fantastic. Now, maybe next time . . .” and sort of coax you into it. But if Susanne didn’t believe it, she just told you flat out, “I don’t believe it.” Which I actually found quite refreshing.’

Hiddleston’s rise to prominence began with Shakespeare on the London stage. ‘I was in a production of Othello and Ken Branagh, being the Shakespearean he is, came to see it.

‘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.

‘Ken cast me as Loki in Thor. Bizarrely enough, Joss Whedon, 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.

The sex scene in The Night Manager, with actress Elizabeth Debicki, helped viewers see a new side to the actor

‘Then I got a letter from Woody Allen saying, “We’re making Midnight In Paris in the summer — I’d love you to play F. Scott Fitzgerald.” To which the answer was a very quick, “Yes!” And then Steven Spielberg cast me in War Horse. So it was a very strange time when all these incredible moments of good fortune were happening. But it all started with Shakespeare, because I couldn’t even get arrested before then.’

The son of a chemist father and former stage manager mother, he can’t remember a time when he was not acting in some way.

‘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.

‘In the summer, my sisters, cousins and I used to write plays and perform them for our parents — this is the days before Xbox and PlayStation, when kids were still kids.

‘When I was a teenager I loved watching Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard or Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Batman. Then as I got older, I discovered theatre, and that’s when I started acting seriously.’

It helped that what he modestly describes as his ‘school just outside London’ — better known as Eton College — had a particularly strong drama department which spawned Eddie Redmayne, Damian Lewis and Dominic West among others. ‘We’d get the train into London and we’d go to the theatre, and that’s where I was bitten by the bug.’

Tom doesn’t say whether other students on the trip included his schoolmates Redmayne or Prince William, because that would be name-dropping.

But when I mention them to him, his face lights up. ‘I think Prince William is rather busy these days and has more important things to do than hang out with me!’ he says. ‘But I see him sometimes at film premieres, which is nice.

‘There is something particular about the friendships you make at boarding school, because you are away from home at a very early age, so the bonds you form there are strong. The friends I made at school are some of the closest I have, and when I see them we just pick up where we left off the last time.

‘Eddie and I are very good friends still. 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’ — he gallantly refrains from mentioning that the role in question was of the female lead, Adela Quested — ‘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 FIVE STEPS IN THE MAKING OF THE NEW JAMES BOND

The Eton factor: Bond creator Ian Fleming and Tom Hiddleston both went to Eton, as did 007 himself — before being expelled for an incident with a maid. Tom looked sharp from an early age as a House Captain.

The Licence to Kill Tom first showed his hand-to-hand combat skills on stage in the Shakespeare plays Othello (left) and Coriolanus, before perfecting his action-man status as Loki in the Thor films.

The brooding looks: Mentor Sir Kenneth Branagh spotted Tom’s ability to light up the screen even when he wasn’t talking when he cast him as his brooding side-kick Detective Magnus Martinson in nordic thriller Wallander.

The hunky body: Any fears Tom didn’t have the body to play 007 were put to rest when he went for a dip in The Night Manager — and was just as hunky as Daniel Craig in Casino Royale.

The ladykiller: In black tie or white, he looks to the manner born, as he proved at this year’s Baftas and New York’s Met Ball, where he swept Taylor Swift on to the dance floor.

He has admitted that, when he announced his decision to become an actor, his father, a self-made man and the no-nonsense son of a Glasgow shipyard worker, was less than delighted.

‘He was genuinely worried that I would be bored and unfulfilled,’ he says. ‘Acting was completely different from anything he knew. He didn’t see it as a real job, but as something wafty and insubstantial.’

The impasse was resolved when his father watched The Gathering Storm, a 2002 Second World War TV movie in which Tom played Randolph Churchill, son of the wartime Prime Minister.

‘It was a very rousing piece that showed Winston Churchill in all his complication and charisma. My dad called me in tears afterwards and said he was proud of me.’

He admits that he was initially unsure himself whether acting was the right choice.

‘The odds of being a successful actor are quite small, so I suppose it did take . . .’ he stops and looks bashful, but can’t see a different way of finishing the sentence, ‘well, maybe a sort of courage and conviction for me to do it.’

These days, he can pick and choose from the many roles he is offered, whether on TV, the big screen or in the theatre. In his two most recent movies he’s played the American country music legend Hank Williams in the biopic I Saw The Light, and the emotionless neurologist Dr Robert Laing in High Rise, both of which garnered enthusiastic reviews.

‘I’m glad all of this happened to me at the age of 30, rather than when I was ten years younger,’ he says. ‘There can be a moment in an actor’s life where you become more well-known, and initially that takes a bit of getting used to.

If given the role, he would have a lot to live up to after Daniel Craig re-invented Bond's body. But Craig has reportedly told studio bosses he is now 'done' with the role

‘I’ve been reassured by being surrounded by familiarity. I come from a very good family, and I’m very close with both of my sisters and with my parents.’

His elder sister Sarah is a journalist, younger sister Emma an actress, and both have helped him learn some valuable life lessons along the way. ‘My mother and sisters are all strong and independent thinkers and have all taught me a lot.

‘What have I learnt? Oh, gosh . . . Well, first of all, I learnt always to compliment them on their haircut!

‘It’s difficult to unpick what they’ve taught me because it’s so much part of who I am. But I did notice when I was about 16 that my friends who had grown up exclusively around men just didn’t understand women.’

So is there a special lady in his life? He has been rumoured to be involved at different times with actresses Susannah Fielding, Kat Dennings, Jessica Chastain and, most recently, with his I Saw The Light co-star Elizabeth Olsen.

But he has steadfastly refused to make a public comment on any love interest — ‘although,’ he adds, polite to the last, ‘I understand the curiosity. I hope that when there’s really something to write about, I’ll be able to talk.’

And do his happily married contemporaries — Eddie Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch, in particular — with impeccable family-man credentials make him feel he should settle down, too?

‘Yes, I’m going to rush out and find the nearest woman and put a ring on her!’ he jokes. ‘Look, I think it’s great for both of those two, they’re both good friends of mine and I’m so happy for them.

‘But it’s not something that’s come into my life yet. I’m not closed to it by any means — in fact, I’m definitely open to the possibility. But you know what they say: you can’t go out and look for it, you just have to wait for it to come to you.’

Ladies, don’t all rush at once.

• I Saw The Light is in cinemas now.