Nicholas Hoult started acting at age 7, then hit the big time starring opposite Hugh Grant in 2002's About a Boy when he was 13.
At 25, English actor, Nicholas Hoult is having one of his best years yet, seeing Mad Max: Fury Road become a major hit while he was filming his role in next year's X-Men: Apocalypse. But in between he returned to Britain to play a vicious record executive in the blacker-than-black comedy Kill Your Friends, based on John Niven's novel about 1990s Britpop.
James Corden Co-stars in Kill Your Friends
Was he apprehensive about taking on Steven Stelfox, a role so different from his usual sympathetic characters? "No," he answers. "Weirdly, I kind of enjoyed being in his company. I'd be walking around town and occasionally I'd have to stop myself because I'd look at someone and hear Stelfox in my head. You know, what he'd think of them, describe them or what he'd want to do to them. It would happen a lot on the Tube."
Indeed, Stelfox was a continual challenge. "Normally, I'm quite relaxed about dialogue and all those sorts of things, and normally you have freedom with character to find it as you go," Hoult says. "But this character was very much about being precise with his words and knowing where he started a sentence, where he was going to finish and what the cherry on top was going to be. There was no time for me to not be on."
Hoult is particularly happy to finally be at a place where he can play complex characters like this. "A few years ago I'd be reading scripts like Kill Your Friends and thinking, 'I'd love to do this,' and they'd cast someone in their late 20s. Now I'm getting to do things like this and Mad Max!"
He also loves his character in the X-Men movies. "At times I'll see superhero movies and admittedly be frustrated by them," he says. "It does feel like some are just packaging a bankable formula. But I love the X-Men films because they have a heart to them. The superheroes in that world aren't smug! I don't want to watch someone who I know is going to win from the start just being awesome for two hours."
Casey Stein (Nicholas Hoult) never had intentions of a life of crime, but during a...
X-Men Apocalypse comes as the ninth instalment in the X-Men film series and stars Jennifer...
This closing chapter of the First Class trilogy falls into the same trap as The...
Mutants and humans alike are familiar with the story of Apocalypse, he was the first...
First-time director Owen Harris boldly attempts a comedy even blacker than American Psycho or Filth...
Libby Day is a fragile and unemployed woman struggling to get away from the demons...
It's the mid 90's and the music scene in the UK is booming. Excess is...
Libby Day is a young woman, still permanently scarred from the events of her childhood....
Leave it to a veteran to show the young sparks how to do it: it's...
The world is messed up. Years after multiple calamities totally trashed the planet, the world...
Mad Max just keeps on running. With nothing else to lose in his life, his...
With the world first running out of oil, water soon followed. Planet Earth is now...