Nicholas Hoult opened about his fear of succumbing to the fate of kid actors after his break out role within the 2002 Hugh Grant dramedy A couple of Boy, revealing that “everyone [back] then, whilst a child, everyone talks to you about how child actors stop working, their life goes off the rails and [how] it doesn’t work out as adults. You’ve gotten this type of fear of what’s to come back.”
The 36-year-old British actor reflected on his almost three decade profession as a mainstream star during a “In Conversation With” talk event on the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah on Monday.
Hoult began the talk by detailing his childhood, revealing that he lived in a household that loved musical theater and acting. He briefly talked about his first audition as a 5-year-old for Philip Goodhew’s 1996 film Intimate Relations after which talked about his time working on Paul and Chris Weitz’s A couple of Boy as an 11-year-old. After confessing his fears of creating it within the business despite the nice notices for his performance within the Nick Horby adaptation, Hoult said that the talk around him on the time, and being aware of the failure some child actors did play on his mind. “Even then I knew I desired to proceed [acting] but I used to be like there’s an excellent likelihood this doesn’t work out,” he said before adding, “Luckily my parents and my family were wonderful within the sense of they sent me to a standard school and kept life around acting as regular as possible, so there was never like this pressure to succeed.”
In A couple of Boy, Hoult starred alongside Toni Collette, the Aussie actress who played his character’s mother. Hoult remarked on the “special” nature of meeting Collette as a toddler, and dealing together with her again twenty years later. “She played my mum in [About a Boy], after which we did a movie two years ago called Juror No. 2, that Clint Eastwood directed. It was lovely to reunite together with her. These those that have known me since I used to be a child, but now I’m a totally different person. Now I get to know them again as an adult, which is admittedly special.”
The talk moved on to Hoult’s time on the revolutionary British teen TV drama Skins, the show that launched the careers of a dizzying variety of now established actors including Daniel Kaluuya, Dev Patel, Jack O’Connell, Hannah Murray, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Kaya Scodelario and Joe Dempsie. Hoult had just missed Kaluuya at Red Sea Film Festival by a number of days and remarked that “certainly one of the wonderful things about Skins is that I made a few of my best friends for all times from that show.”
Describing his Skins character Tony Stonem as a “piece of labor”, Hoult reflected on his time working on the show fondly. “All of us were like 16 or 17-years-old, living away from home for the primary time in Bristol. We grew up together. Nobody expected that show would take off the way in which it did. It was the primary drama that was made for [the Channel 4 youth orientated channel E4]. The script was great, it was an excellent team but nobody expected it to [be so big]. What was unique about it was that all of us went in with no expectations, we were just having fun.
On his move into franchise acting, Hoult reveals the quirk of fate that led him to be securing the role of Beast in in Matthew Vaughn’s 2011 hit X-Men: First Class. “One in all the things that led to [playing Beast] was Tom Ford’s first movie A Single Man. After that I used to be actually forged in Mad Max, but we needed to delay the filming because we were meant to shoot in Australia but we had to maneuver it to Namibia. So then I called my agents and said I needed a job. They usually said there was interest in you playing Beast in X-Men. I needed to do an audition for that for that in Australia the following day, and I jumped on the plane for a screen test and all of it worked out.”
Once more reminding people how young he actually is despite his seemingly veteran status as a mainstream star, Hoult said he grew up watching the X-Men movies and loved the comics. He shared one particularly “crazy” moment for him on the set of 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. “I used to be within the Cerebro corridor with James McAvoy playing Xavier, after which I looked over and it was Hugh Jackman as Wolverine [standing there]. I used to be [thinking] that is the guy that I used to be watching play Wolverine after I was 11-years-old and now I’m standing next to him and you recognize it was really like an out of body experience, a bit like tripping. It was really bizarre, it’s like ‘oh I’m reliving my childhood, but in real time.’”
Asked if he felt was now famous and receiving attention from fans after starring in an enormous franchise like X-Men, Hoult quipped that “for those [films] I used to be mostly covered in blue fur. So it wasn’t like walking down the road and folks were like ‘there’s that guy!’ However the comic fans are really supportive and caring and so they’re passionate.”
Moving on to his acclaimed performance in George Miller’s 2015 masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road, Hoult described working on the project as “the strangest experience, right from the audition.” He said that his audition lasted 4 hours and that he and his scene partner did one scene where they were playing commentary games, doing repetitive tasks and physical activities. “It was like theater training and I left the audition considering, even when I don’t get this movie, that’s been the most effective experiences I’ve had as an actor.”
Hoult described Miller as “so creative and intelligent” and reflected on the deafening Fury Road shoot in Namibia. “[A lot of it was practical] so that you couldn’t hear anything. They’d give the signal to start out up the engines and the vehicles and for 20 or half-hour we’d cross the desert filming and sometimes you’d see a camera fly by like on one other truck or something and also you’d just be like doing scenes, probably not hearing them and wondering what was happening.”
He added that, “George has got such an exquisite vision. There wasn’t a script, it was like a comic book book that he had… Per week or two into filming, I used to be completely in awe of the entire experience and I said to George, ‘you’ve been wanting to make this movie for 17 years, how do you’re feeling now you’re here?’ And he said, ‘it’s very special to be here but at the identical time [I can’t] get carried away with my love for the project. The those that go to the theater [to watch this] in two years time, they’re not coming in with this investment within the story [that I have], you continue to must create that for them.’ Which I believed was a very smart [thing to say].”
On his recent work on James Gunn’s Superman, Hoult spoke about auditioning to play the Man of Steel initially but as he read the script, he realized that he could really see himself playing Lex Luthor as a substitute. “The primary time I read the script, I remember reading the Lex scenes and considering these are interesting. ‘I would actually be higher at that than Superman,’ but I used to be like, well don’t say that to anyone now whilst you’re auditioning for Superman [laughs].”
“My brain was like, yes, that’s the character [Lex] you need to and should be playing because there have been just moments within the dialogue and the script where I believed that it’s really delicious. A person like this, he is certainly very much the villain of that story, but at the identical time, there’s this thing where for those who unpack things you might piece together what his motivations are and see that there’s a special angle to this. It could make sense, regardless that [Lex] is misguided and his approach is awful, it’s terrible.”
Hoult said he loved working with Gunn on Superman, saying “I actually trusted him. We went through the rehearsals and and he’d say like ‘this isn’t working, let’s do this, let’s do this,’ and so it was explorative within the sense of developing the character together.” The actor revealed that his research for the film included Brian Azzarello’s comic series Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, in addition to watching the unique Christopher Reeves Superman movies and the recent Reeves documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. He added that he was excited to play Lex as he was following within the footsteps of Gene Hackman, certainly one of his all-time favorite actors.
Later, during an audience Q&A session, Hoult was asked which director he would love to work with. He said he was keen to work with Red Sea Film Festival competition jury president Sean Baker. “I believe he is an excellent [filmmaker], Florida Project, Red Rocket, I believe he’s making really special movies.” Hoult also cited Quentin Tarantino, and joked that he “wouldn’t say no” to working with fellow Brit Christopher Nolan.
Hoult was also asked whether he would consider directing, and he was clear that he wasn’t interested immediately, as he knew the job of a director was “extremely hard.” But he confessed that he idly imagined he might find a way to inform a certain story in his way, but for the moment he desired to think about acting.