Tom Hiddleston is dating Zawe Ashton.

Tom Hiddleston

Tom Hiddleston

The 38-year-old actor - whose last high profile relationship was with Taylor Swift in 2016 - has been secretly seeing his 'Betrayal' co-star since February and Tom is said to be smitten with Zawe, 35.

A source told The Sun newspaper: "Tom really has fallen for Zawe in a big way.

"They've actually been together for more than six months. But he is so paranoid about his private life since his relationship with Taylor that he has gone to great lengths to keep this under wraps.

"Tom and Zawe spent Easter together renovating his house in England. They now spend most weekends together and going for long walks with his dog. He thinks this could be the love of his life - he's ready to settle down."

Zawe and Tom are currently starring in Harold Pinter's play 'Betrayal' with Charlie Cox, where they play a couple whose marriage is torn apart by the wife's affair with the best friend of her husband.

Tom often spoke about his relationship with Taylor - who has been dating Joe Alwyn for the past three years - during their time together and insisted he didn't care what anyone thought about them.

He said: "How best to put this? That notion is - look, the truth is that Taylor Swift and I are together and we're very happy. Thanks for asking. That's the truth. It's not a publicity stunt."

He also explained: "I don't know, it comes down to being authentic. Everything you do you have to make sure you truly believe in it and as long as you know that, it doesn't matter what anyone else says about it because the nature of being a public figure is that everyone will have an opinion about anything you do, and as long as you know why you've done something and you've committed to it with authenticity then you're okay."

However, Tom recently revealed that he has decided to be more "protective" about his private life these days.

He said: "I'm protective about my internal world now in probably a different way. That's because I didn't know it needed protecting before."