Tom Hiddleston on learning a new accent, playing Hank Williams

TORONTO – It took about six weeks of singing for hours on end for Tom Hiddleston to drop his crisp British accent, adopt a distinct Alabama twang and transform into American country-music legend Hank Williams for the new biopic “I Saw the Light.”

The 35-year-old English actor, who sings every song in the film, called his time spent in Nashville, Tenn., “intensive immersion” and credited coaching from Grammy-winning country musician Rodney Crowell for helping him get into form.

“We’d get up in the morning and have a bowl of porridge and a cup of coffee and then he’d say, ‘All right, Tommy boy, we doin’ “Love Sick Blues” or we doin’ “Move it on Over?”‘ And he’d go into his little studio and we’d just sing.”

The film follows Williams’s life as he wrote and recorded songs that were often a reflection of his struggles with health problems, alcohol abuse and tumultuous relationships. Williams died suddenly at the age of 29 after a heart attack.

As part of his preparation for the role, Hiddleston was instructed by Crowell to “sing this stuff from your own heart” to truly capture the emotion of Williams’s hits, which included classics like “Cold, Cold Heart,” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”

“I realized very quickly that the reason people loved Hank Williams so much is because it was so personal. Because his music was so profoundly honest,” said Hiddleston. “I had to bring the same level of honesty.”

Hiddleston discovered there were many aspects of Williams’s internal conflicts that he could relate to, which helped his performance.

“There was something very touching about the tension in him between being an authentic artist and being a commercial star. I found that really moving in a way,” Hiddleston said.

“I really related to his joy at performing and that sense of feeling more vital on stage … and then the secondary thing about being a professional is sometimes you’ve got to get on that stage when you’ve had a bad day, and I related to that too.”

For director Marc Abraham, who lauded Hiddleston for his work, it was important for the film to be as accurate as possible.

“My goal doing it was to show his real life, which is where all the songs came from, this pain of his addiction, the pain of his relationships,” Abraham said.

“You see all this mess and what does he do with it? He takes it and he kneads it and then he sings these songs.”

There’s at least one thing Hiddleston took away from the experience of playing Williams: that Alabama accent.

“Sometimes I find myself going, ‘How you doin’? You good? I’m good,’” said a grinning Hiddleston, putting his well-honed twang on display.

“There are things I found myself able to say in Hank’s voice I probably haven’t been able to say as myself, but it’s still in there somewhere. There was a twinkling mischief in his charisma that I really enjoyed.”

“I Saw the Light” opens in cinemas in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Montreal on Friday before expanding to other cities across the country in the coming weeks.