ONTD

Nicholas Hoult may be newly single, following his split from Hollywood golden girl (and Best Actress Oscar winner) Jennifer Lawrence in January, but he isn’t short of distractions.

The boy from Berkshire will soon be starring opposite Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in the dystopian reboot Mad Max: Fury Road; then, further down the line, there is the Hollywood adaptation of Birdsong, which will see him play the First World War officer Stephen Wraysford. And already this year he has lent an undead charm to the zombie romp Warm Bodies, and is now carrying Jack the Giant Slayer, yet another fairy tale given the big-budget 3D CGI treatment.

‘It’s a good adventure, not trying to be super-dark or anything,’ says the 23-year-old. ‘Bryan Singer [the director] has done the 3D really well. They’ve all done a very good job on it.’ Indeed they have, the film is zippy and fun, there’s a lively supporting cast (including Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci and Ian McShane), but mainly it is Hoult bringing such shambolic charisma to the beanstalk-scaling hero that you can’t help rooting for him.

In person, Hoult is surprisingly tall — 6ft 3in — and has piercing blue eyes and designer stubble. He has an intriguing combination of candour and evasion, and tends to respond to questions by asking a question in return. We meet on Valentine’s Day, so naturally I ask him how much post he has received. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t been home.I’ve been staying in town, doing all this. How about you?’ No one cares about that, Nicholas! They want to know what you do on Valentine’s Day. ‘Oh, I dunno. Dinner or something. It’s the little gestures, nothing too grand.’

How is it being a single man again? ‘It’s good to keep busy and focus, and have a lot of other stuff to think about,’ he says. He and Lawrence, 22, met on the set of X-Men: First Class in 2010 and went on to have a two-year relationship that seems to have ended amicably. Lawrence has called Hoult her best friend. ‘Hopefully I’m his best friend, too... He’s my favourite person and makes me laugh harder than anybody,’ she said recently. In turn, he has spoken of his ‘pride’ at her awards nominations, though he didn’t make the Oscars to see her win Best Actress last month.

They are shortly to reunite on the set of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the seventh in the series. Will that be awkward? ‘No, not at all. We had a great time making that first film and the whole cast got along really well. And I’m really pleased that Bryan [Singer] is directing...’ he begins to waffle on about how this one will be great, because Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellen are in it, just like the X-Men films he watched when he was growing up. ‘Did you see what I did there? I segued out of that quite skilfully,’ he beams. Did they teach you how to do that in Hollywood? ‘No, I’m just very intelligent.’ Isn’t it weird seeing your ex voted the sexiest woman in the world? ‘No, because I know her. I never really get starstruck by actors.’

Hoult was raised in a fairly feminine household. His father was a commercial airline pilot and spent a lot of time away, while his older brother left home when Nicholas was nine, leaving him with his mother and two sisters. ‘I was basically raised by them,’ he says.

I wonder what he thinks he gained from this — aside from his unlikely interest in knitting (‘I had to stop, I got obsessed with it and it wasn’t fun’). ‘Well, I’d like to say I gained some sort of understanding of women. I think I can kind of make sense of some of the ways they think. And I guess it makes you more relaxed around girls. You know how guys with brothers are very rough and tumble? Though actually, come to think of it, I did used to fight my sisters occasionally... Until I got bigger, and I thought: “Well, that’s no fun. I can actually win these fights now.” Though they’d probably beat me up still, come to think of it.’ I suggest that while boys with brothers tend to take a more pugnacious approach to scrapping their way to the top, those of us with sisters tend to seek accord. ‘I’d go with you on that,’ he says. ‘I’m pretty easy-going about things.’

Hoult still lives in Berkshire with his family when he is not being kennelled in hotel rooms by film companies. He was first spotted when he was three: he was in the audience to watch his older brother in an amateur dramatics production (all three of Nicholas’ siblings, James, Rosanna and Clarista, are also actors), and the director was so impressed by Hoult’s toddler focus that he signed him up. He gained his first professional work at seven in the British 1950s period film Intimate Relations with Julie Walters, before getting his break opposite Hugh Grant in the film adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel About a Boy, at the age of 12. He was at comprehensive school in Bracknell at the time, and, given that he seems a sensitive soul, I wonder if he was ever bullied? ‘Minimal amounts, really,’ he says. Even with that pudding-bowl haircut? ‘There would be the odd comment, but it didn’t really worry me that much. Kids are horrible anyway — I was horrible when I was growing up. You just accept it and it toughens you up.’

He acted through school — Richard E Grant cast him as a young Ralph Compton in his autobiographical film Wah-Wah, and he also appeared in Kidulthood — but it was the part of Tony in the zeitgeisty E4 drama Skins when he was 16 that helped him make the bridge from child acting to adult roles. The ultra-confident teenage rebel was clearly fun to play. ‘You can come back from these roles with a slightly different outlook,’ he says. ‘Maybe sometimes the thing that your character is striving for is something that you realise you could be striving for.’ So, did he come back from Skins vowing to have more sex and take more drugs? ‘That would be the obvious thing. The thing about him was his confidence. Obviously, he was very manipulative, very intelligent, but he was always trying to push the boundaries and see what he could get from life.’

I ask what scares him. ‘Becoming a sad, old, lonely actor,’ he says quickly. ‘Genuinely, that’s probably the biggest fear. You see it a lot. Have you ever seen that Sofia Coppola film Somewhere with Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning? He is estranged from his wife, he never sees his daughter, he just lives in the Chateau Marmont, drinking... It’s very actory. That’s the ultimate life I don’t want to end up having.’

I wonder if that early experience of acting alongside Hugh Grant left a stronger impression than we thought? ‘It’s weird not being able to do anything for yourself,’ he says, warming to the theme. ‘You get told where to stand, how to look, what to wear, continually. That’s why it’s good to have some time off occasionally, just to do your own thing. Although that then becomes terrifying in itself — when you don’t have a schedule. During a film, you have every minute of your life planned. You come out of the other end and you’re like: “Now what do I do?” It takes a few days to adjust.’ What is his usual process? ‘Just doing nothing. Pottering around, being very boring, until I have to get out and do something.’ He pauses. ‘This feels like home, being in this room here now.’

At least he has Colin Firth to turn to; his co-star in A Single Man has become something of a mentor to him. ‘I had dinner with him the other night; he’s always the best person to go to for advice.’ What sort of advice? ‘You have to take your work seriously, obviously, but you have to also recognise the ridiculousness of it. Colin has had the ups and downs, been through all the actor breakdowns, and he’s very intelligent, so he can see it for what it is.’

It was A Single Man that opened doors for Hoult in Hollywood — even if he didn’t get to keep the magnificent white jumper that he wore throughout the film. ‘I didn’t! Colin took to calling me Lambchop because of that jumper.’ Despite being ungenerous with his knitwear, the designer-turned-director Tom Ford was ‘ very passionate and caring, knew exactly what he wanted from the film’.

At least Hoult got to beef up a little bit for Mad Max: Fury Road, in which he plays Nux, a feral young warrior who fights alongside Tom Hardy’s Max. ‘That was a very masculine environment,’ he says. Following that there is the more intellectually challenging indie film Young Ones, directed by Gwyneth Paltrow’s brother Jake, and Rupert Wyatt’s adaptation of Birdsong. ‘That’s a character that I just really care about,’ he says. ‘He’s very hardened, surviving that atrocious war, though he doesn’t care about his own life. I’m looking forward to that. That’s not me dressed up in a load of make-up, prancing around.’

Ultimately, he says, he would like to emulate his screen heroes. ‘Jack Nicholson. Steve McQueen. Peter Sellers. Most Bonds...’ A Bond who knits! When we’re all tired of Daniel Craig’s machismo, that could be just the ticket, I say. ‘Give me 15 years,’ he smiles. ‘Let’s start the campaign now. I’m going to start walking round Pinewood in a tuxedo.’

Source.