Interviews with Nicholas Hoult often find it a challenge not to remind readers of the fact that the actor is now grown up. Stating the obvious, yes – it’s been 17 years since he captured attention as the bobble-hatted “boy” opposite Hugh Grant in About A Boy. His career since has ranged from antagonistic teenager Tony in Skins to Hollywood superheroes and recently the bewigged Robert Harley in awards season, well, favourite, The Favourite. Now 29, Hoult has the same unassuming and boyish charm that appealed from the start, just with a stellar CV under his belt.
In one of his latest onscreen ventures, he gives a quietly sympathetic portrayal of the young John Ronald Reuel (aka JRR) Tolkien (pronounced Tolk-een as is reprimanded in the film). Like many, Hoult was a fan of the author’s work (having apparently been introduced to Middle-earth on the set of About A Boy) but knew little about the man behind some of the greatest literary works of the last century. The biopic, titled Tolkien, charts the author’s life from his early years in a Birmingham orphanage to the horrific scenes he encountered in the Battle of the Somme, zoning in on the relationships that are said to have influenced his themes of friendship, love and fellowship.
“I read the script [about] what a remarkable life he had and these relationships that inspired him,” Hoult tells us of Tolkien’s courtship of his wife Edith Pratt (Lily Collins), who he met at the orphanage, and the brotherly bond he made as part of a boisterous Oxbridge-(and battlefield-)bound foursome at school.
“You’ve got videos and recordings of Tolkien later in life, but there’s not anything tangible from the age I’m playing him, so you’re not doing an impression,” he considers of how interpreting the emotions and motivations of a character (whose work may be infamous but whose background is little known) comes from a jigsaw-like piecing together of discovered details. “It’s more amateur sleuth work, where you read his work and about his life, then you put that into the framework of the script and the story, and interpret it as best as possible to honour him.”
It’s a responsibility to take on a role based on a real person (Tolkien’s Estate disavowed the biopic before its release, saying “the family and the Estate wish to make clear that they did not approve of, authorise or participate in the making of this film”) – and one that weighs on Hoult.
“The more you learn about them, the more of an affinity you have to the person. You obviously care about every job going into it, it’s what you’re passionate about, but the more you research, the more you feel the responsibility of what you’ve taken on,” the actor, who played another literary great – Catcher In The Rye author J.D Salinger – in 2017’s Rebel In The Rye, says. “So it becomes this thing of, ‘Wow, maybe I’ve bitten off more than I can chew’… You can’t let it stifle you. At a certain point, you just have to turn up and do your thing.”
The way Hoult discusses the intricacies that go into developing a character is demonstrative of an actor dedicated to their craft. So too is the variety of the projects that he chooses to take on – from huge Hollywood franchises (he’s part of the star-studded line-up of the forthcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix) to interesting independent projects. “You get to enrich your own life through each character you play,” is the thing that he finds the most rewarding about acting. “You leave each job with a new perspective and a new understanding, and then you can put that into your next character, so it’s this lovely thing where it’s an education in life essentially.”
A downside is, of course, the intense media interest in his personal life, which at times has been the subject of many a headline and paparazzi photo. Hoult is private about his current partner (model Bryana Holly) and their child, born last year, whose gender the couple has chosen not to publicly discuss.
So what has he learned – after almost two decades in the industry – that he wishes he’d known from the start?
“Each job feels like you’re starting again – you’re working with new people, you’re playing a new character. You don’t know what you’re doing,” he considers. “You turn up on day one like, what are we going to do here? And then it happens and finishes, and you think, ‘I wish I could go back and do it again because now I know what I’m doing’. I guess the thing is the process of learning, you have to learn from your mistakes. And, even though I’ve been doing it for a long time, I still feel like I’m pretty new to it.”
Tolkien is in cinemas from May 3 and Dark Phoenix is out from June 7.
