Nicholas Hoult Caps Banner Year with ‘Nosferatu,’ Which Included a Surprising Rule From Robert Eggers
Nicholas Hoult has truly outdone himself in 2024.
The English actor has received the best reviews of his nearly three-decade-long career for a trio of critically acclaimed films that were all timed to the final two months of the calendar year. To top it all off, he delivered a new take on Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s Superman (2025), one of the most anticipated and consequential releases in quite some time. A first look is expected to arrive next week.
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Beginning with Nov. 1’s Juror #2, Hoult portrayed the title character in what many consider to be Clint Eastwood’s finest film in ages. The warm response from critics and audiences has also helped keep the drama in the year-end conversation after a surprisingly limited theatrical release and modest awards campaign.
“It’s always difficult when you release movies. You put in so much, emotionally, and you obviously care deeply. But once you release it, it’s not yours anymore. It becomes something else,” Hoult tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So there’s always a part of you that lets them go in hopes that they find their place amongst everything else, and it’s been nice to see that the film has been received well. It’s found a good audience of people that like it.”
Five weeks after Juror #2, Hoult returned to the big screen in Justin Kurzel’s 1980s-based historical crime drama, The Order. He plays the dangerously charismatic Bob Mathews, the real-life white supremacist leader of the Aryan Nation offshoot the Order, which robbed banks and armored vehicles in a multifaceted effort to overthrow the federal government. Of his three current roles, Hoult admits that Mathews’ state of mind was the one he was most glad to throw away, especially after delivering a fiery speech at a white supremacist rally.
“There was a lot of energy coming back at me, and that’s what was scary about doing it,” Hoult recalls. “You suddenly realize the power of those voices and how they can manipulate huge waves of people and prey on their emotions to get them fired up.”
On Christmas Day, Hoult again returns to cinemas as Thomas Hutter in Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu. Thomas is an underachieving estate agent who reluctantly accepts a job that involves journeying from Germany to Transylvania for a fateful meeting with one Count Orlock (Bill Skarsgard). Like Justin Kemp in Juror #2 and Bob Mathews in The Order, Thomas goes above and beyond for his family, specifically his troubled wife, Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), but he does so in counterproductive ways.
Hoult worked with frequent Eggers collaborator Anya Taylor-Joy in 2022’s The Menu, and once he landed his role in Nosferatu, she offered him an orientation that proved to be spot on, save for the omission of one key challenge.
“The one thing that [Taylor-Joy] didn’t mention was, ‘Don’t move your eyebrows.’ I’d previously been shooting a show called The Great for a while, and with that character, I got away with a lot of comedic eyebrow twitches and movements,” Hoult says. “So that was something that I quickly had to nix for this role because Rob [Eggers] does not like it. That was something that felt very alien at first.”
Throughout the following interview, Hoult admirably redirects any praise to his collaborators, and when it’s mentioned that Gunn recently stated that his Lex Luthor is the most “imposing” onscreen take of the character to date, he seemed a bit hesitant to accept such an adjective. Instead, he focused more on the quality of Gunn’s script and the “incredible” performance by his co-star David Corenswet as the new Man of Steel.
Corenswet relayed a story not too long ago regarding a friendly wager between him and Hoult at the Paris Olympics. The former ended up winning a contest involving the most accurate predictions of the high-diving judges’ scores, and as much as this competition suggests that life is imitating art, Hoult insists that the two did not extend their on-camera dynamic to their off-camera one.
“There was no sense of trying to create a rivalry behind the scenes. It would’ve felt manufactured and fake, and that wouldn’t have been beneficial just because of the overall atmosphere,” Hoult shares. “We’re two actors that can separate what we’re doing within a scene and also support each other and what’s best for the storytelling in that moment as well. I’m there to support him, and he embodies Superman in such a wonderful way.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Hoult also discusses Skarsgard’s unrecognizable turn as Count Orlock, including the reason he would sometimes tend to his co-star between takes.
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What was your first reaction when you found out that your trifecta of year-end films would all be released in the span of two months?
I was like, “Oh, that’s going to be a lot of press,” so I was surprised. We shot the movies back to back [in 2023], but I didn’t expect their releases to be so close. It’s nice that they’re very different movies and very different characters, but like you said, they’re a trifecta of the same moment in my life. So it makes sense in some ways to now be talking about them in sync.
If you had to find a throughline between all three characters, would you say that they all go to extreme lengths for their wives, families and mistresses?
(Laughs.) Yeah, I’ve drawn comparisons between two of them, but I’ve never tried to link all three into one category. So I think you would be right in that assessment of them. They’re all misguided in a way.
The last time we spoke, you and Anya Taylor-Joy had recently talked to each other about what to expect from your then-upcoming Robert Eggers and George Miller projects. Was the Eggers experience as Anya advertised?
It was completely as Anya advertised in the most wonderful way. Rob is just a phenomenal filmmaker. He really is. His dedication to the craft and understanding of cinema and the historic base that he builds his stories on is so authentic to the worlds he creates. He’s also uncompromising in his vision and his story and in bringing them to life in the way that he imagines. So that’s a wonderful energy to be around, and for Anya to work with him so early in her career, I can see how she became such an incredible actress. I can see how working with him and learning from him improves people as performers, and that appealed to me in doing this movie. I’m such a fan of the performances in Rob’s movies, and I wanted to go behind the scenes to see how that works.
Did she give you a heads-up about his dislike for eyebrow acting?
(Laughs.) The one thing that she didn’t mention was, “Don’t move your eyebrows.” I’d previously been shooting a show called The Great for a while, and with that character, I got away with a lot of comedic eyebrow twitches and movements. So that was something that I quickly had to nix for this role because Rob does not like it. He sent me quite a few [Ingmar] Bergman movies and a lot of other movies to research and watch as prep for Nosferatu, and there’s very little eyebrow acting in them. So Rob does not enjoy that, and that was something that felt very alien at first. I was like, “OK, I have to try and keep my eyebrows as still as possible throughout this whole movie.”
I presume this was a deal-breaker for some people, but when you were cast as Thomas, were you asked if you had an aversion to rats?
I was not asked about any aversion to rats, but I also didn’t have the bad end of that deal with the rats on this movie. I’m in scenes with rats, but Bill [Skarsgard] had to be locked in a sarcophagus with them. Emma [Corrin] had rats climbing all over their body, but I was only in scenes with rats. They were just scene partners for me, so it was easier.
Was it The Menu that originally had a scene where you’d have to eat a rat?
Oh, that was in The Great. Essentially, my character had been starved out by Elle Fanning’s character. So he was meant to be eating a rat, but they actually used a squirrel, which is a gamey delicacy in some places. I’d never eaten a squirrel before, but it does look like a rat once it’s there in front of you. Yeah, it was kind of disgusting.
You and Lily-Rose Depp have a powerful scene late in Nosferatu where there’s quite literally four or five different turns within this overall confession and confrontation. Did that six-minute scene require a great deal of rehearsal given all the complex dynamics?
Yeah, it is such a beautiful scene. It’s written so well, and it’s obviously the culmination of their whole relationship and journey. A lot is revealed, and it’s also tragic and emotional. The way that Rob likes to work, there was a rehearsal period where the blocking was set out of where we needed to be and where the camera was going to be flowing through that scene. It was all to make sure everyone was in the right places. But it’s obviously such a physical and emotional scene for Lily as well that we didn’t rehearse it flat out. We just roughly figured out what the layout was, and then we did it on the day. It was an incredible scene to be in just because of the dynamism of Lily’s performance in those moments, and the way she switches back and forth between the slight possession and Ellen in reality, and the emotion and physicality that she brings. It was a really powerful performance to be in the room and get to witness.
I love what the makeup team did with you at certain points, because it looked like they accentuated and outlined the shape of your skull. Was the idea to turn him into a living skull?
Thank you. (Laughs.) “You looked like a living skull.”
It’s meant to be a compliment, I swear!
(Laughs.) Rob asked me to lose some weight for the movie. So I was about 20 pounds lighter than I am normally, and that weight loss was combined with the makeup team’s brilliant job. Thomas goes through a lot in this movie, and so they added that harrowing look with hollowed-out cheekbones. That was some great makeup in terms of making Thomas look like he’d been to hell and back.
According to the credits, Bill Skarsgard is in this movie, so we’ll just have to take your word for it.
(Laughs.)
Did you ever share a makeup trailer with him and witness his transformation into something unrecognizable?
No, I didn’t, but that’s been one of the brilliant things that people have said so far. They’re like, “Oh, I got 20 or 30 minutes into the movie without seeing Bill.” And then they suddenly realize that they have seen him; they just didn’t relate that it was him. Bill’s performance is completely transformative and wonderful in this. Everything has completely changed: his physicality, his makeup, his voice. But, because of his prosthetics, he had a separate makeup trailer than the rest of us, so I didn’t get to see that process taking place.
Jude Law told me recently that Justin Kurzel engineered The Order’s schedule so that you guys didn’t cross paths until your phenomenal scene together at the lake. Did Rob keep you and Bill separate for a similar effect here?
He didn’t completely keep us separate in that sense. Because of what Bill’s process, makeup-wise, entailed, it did mean that we were in separate trailers and things like that. But I’ve been in prosthetics before [as X-Men’s Beast], and I know what that process can be and how isolating and tough and claustrophobic it can feel. So, in between takes, I’d try and take care of Bill, but I’d also keep separate just to stay in the realm of what we were doing. Rob creates a great atmosphere on set in terms of the lighting and music that’s playing behind the scenes. The whole layout makes you want to inhabit that world authentically.
Was Count Orlock’s guttural voice really there on the day?
Yeah, it was. It’s such a wild voice, and you would believe that it had been tampered or tinkered with in post to give it more depth and boom. But that really was the voice that Bill had on the day, and I remember my first time hearing a recording of it on Rob’s phone whilst we were in rehearsals. I was like, “Wow, that’s so unexpected, but brilliant. It’s exactly what you would imagine a dead 200-year-old Transylvanian nobleman would sound like.” And the thing that was most compelling in some ways was the breathing behind it as well. There was such detail that Bill developed within it.
Thomas and Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are dear friends and former schoolmates. You and Aaron have a relatively similar history?
Yeah, I’ve known Aaron for probably 20 years. I don’t know how long exactly. We came up together [in the U.K.], so we’ve been friends for a long time. And when Rob said that he was going to play Friedrich, I was thrilled because it meant that we already have that dynamic as friends. And, personally, I love watching Aaron in movies. He’s one of the most talented actors of our generation, and he always makes bold choices and commits to them, creating really compelling characters. So it was really fun to be in scenes with a friend, someone who I look up to and respect so much, and see how he transformed for this.
I love that you’ve now worked with the two ATJs, Aaron and Anya.
(Laughs.) The two ATJs! That’s right.
When the carriage arrives for Thomas en route to Count Orlock’s castle, he’s levitated inside it. Did they put you on some kind of dolly?
Yeah, I’m glad you noticed that. There’s lots of haunting dreamlike elements in that section of the movie, as Thomas is on his journey. So when the carriage arrived, I didn’t walk up steps to get into it. I stepped onto a dolly that raised me up into the carriage. Little elements like that, combined with the shots that Rob and his DP Jarin [Blaschke] designed, give the movie its whole overall feel.
There’s another cool moment when Thomas wakes up just after the carriage ride. The shot begins above Thomas’s head, but I was actually standing. They made a fake pair of legs for me, which are seated with the coat draped across them so it looks like I’m sitting in the carriage. But then, as the camera tilts and comes down, the legs and the carriage all get swept away, and I’m actually standing there before turning around and entering through the door. So the shot design and the way that Rob and Jarin create tension through the movie is really magical as a filmmaking escapade. They don’t give the audience a break; they keep them in that compelling, dreamlike, imaginary world.
Thomas’ headspace is mostly shame since he can’t provide for his wife in the way that he wants. Bob’s headspace in The Order consists of a lot of resentment since he expects the country to completely revolve around people like him. And Justin’s headspace in Juror #2 is obviously riddled with guilt and fear over what he’s done and how it might affect his growing family. Whose state of mind would you least like to inhabit again?
That’s a tough question. Bob is fueled with so much hate, and there was so much hideous ideology that I had to understand. I had to somehow get into his headspace, so that character was definitely the most horrible to research and try to understand. So you try to do all that, but as you said, there’s this other avenue of Bob who’s trying to create a community and family and using that to prey on people.
Justin’s headspace is a difficult one because, on top of the guilt that he obviously feels, he has to internalize it and keep it all private. So to hold things within himself is even more painful.
And Thomas is someone who always learns everything too late. If he’d been able to understand Ellen’s own shame and been able to communicate emotionally with her earlier on, then he probably wouldn’t have thought that a bigger house and more wealth would have solved their problems. He then wouldn’t have gone on this mission, and it wouldn’t have caused all these other problems.
But, to answer your question, Bob is definitely the headspace that I would not like to be in again.
Yeah, it couldn’t have been easy to step into Bob’s shoes and give this big impassioned speech to a room full of white supremacists. I know it’s make-believe, but were you glad to put that day behind you?
Yeah, up until then, we hadn’t done any scenes that had focused on the darkness of what The Order is really about. So it was tricky, but doing it for the first time, the supporting cast in that room gave a lot back. There was a lot of energy coming back at me, and that’s what was scary about doing it. You suddenly realize the power of those voices and how they can manipulate huge waves of people and prey on their emotions to get them fired up. So that scene was a turning point in the shooting of The Order. We were suddenly like, “Whoa, it’s terrifying what we’re unwrapping.”
Clint Eastwood is known for being a one-take wonder, so did you feel a lot more pressure than usual to nail a scene on the first go?
Yes and no. Going into Juror #2, I was obviously aware of Clint’s reputation of one take, maybe two, if something really needs to be changed or something technically goes wrong. But there’s something quite liberating about it as well. He creates an atmosphere on set that is very calming and relaxed, and there’s a flow to his creativity. Maybe it’s partly because Clint is quite a musician. He likes jazz, and so he has this ability to trust the process. Maybe the little things that might go wrong, that you’d normally try to fix with a take two, are actually what makes things feel real and authentic. So he’s very much about just the emotional truth of moments. And when you dial into that and let go of trying to stamp a moment too much for what you think the story is going to be, it’s quite liberating to trust the audience and the process. So I enjoyed it after a while, but it does take a minute to get used to.
Take the garage scene, for example. Zoey Deutch’s character seeks reassurance from Justin, but he can no longer bottle up his guilt. He begins the scene with normal complexion, but as it cuts back and forth, he gets progressively more red in the face. Even an emotional scene like that one wasn’t dwelled on for too long?
I actually thought about that scene a lot. As I was saying earlier, Justin doesn’t share his story with anyone, apart from Kiefer Sutherland’s character, who becomes his lawyer. He keeps it so bottled up, and the reddening of his complexion is the buildup to the truth suddenly being out there to the person he loves most, his wife. Zoey is so fantastic in terms of how she approached that scene and the energy she brought to it. All of this terrible dread that he’d been hiding was suddenly at the forefront of their relationship, and then it takes a turn where you don’t expect them to be able to bury it for the good of their family down the road.
The character is set up to be a good guy, and while he makes lots of decisions that are understandable in terms of what you would do and if you would protect yourself in the same manner, they’re also not the “nice guy” choice to make. So it was fun to see how far you can take the audience by putting them in that character’s shoes and holding up a mirror to see what they would do. So I thought about that pivotal scene a fair bit, but you still have to try and let it go.
I think we all wish that Juror #2 had a bigger push in terms of its release, however, it’s still managed to remain in the conversation through top 10 lists, such as NBR’s, and various home viewership charts. Are you encouraged that its quality has kept it in the mix?
It’s always difficult when you release movies. You put in so much, emotionally, and you obviously care deeply. You also care about all the people involved, so you want the best for it and you just hope that people like it. You go into it trying to make a good film and tell a good story that people will care about. But once you release it, it’s not yours anymore. It becomes something else. And there’s so many stories of films not doing well or not getting good reviews or attention on first release, but then they find a life down the road. So there’s always a part of you that lets them go in hopes that they find their place amongst everything else, and it’s been nice to see that the film has been received well. It’s found a good audience of people that like it.
You’ve had a number of reunions on and off the screen of late: Nick Cage, Hugh Grant, Daniel Kaluuya. And Toni Collette, who played your mother in About a Boy, was another reunion in Juror #2. Was it odd at first go from a mother-son dynamic to one that’s totally opposite?
It might have been more arresting for Toni because I’ve obviously grown and changed so much in that time. In some ways, she’s exactly as I remember: this ray of light and source of fun. She took such great care of me on About a Boy, and she still feels like someone who really looks after me, so our reunion was a nice thing for me. But it was definitely an odd mix, though, because the first scenes that we shot together were the last scenes of the movie, so there was an underbelly of all these emotions. After 22 years, we were back in scenes together, having changed so much. We’re completely different people in many ways, but you have that memory of a lovely shared experience that was such a pivotal moment of my life. So there was a slew of emotions and thoughts running through my brain, which hopefully helped in that moment.
James Gunn believes that your Lex Luthor is the most “imposing” version of the character yet, onscreen.
(Hoult receives this praise with a degree of flattered disbelief.)
Was that your jumping-off point?
I don’t know if that was the first jumping-off point. James writes such wonderful scripts. He has such a great understanding of storytelling and filmmaking. I just love watching his movies, and I have complete trust in him. We went back and forth on the energy behind certain scenes and the Lex in this movie, when you meet him and where he goes to. So it was really fun to create with him because he’s a director who pushed me in exciting ways. I left set each day looking forward to going back, so I really enjoyed the process with James. I was like, “Oh, this is exciting where he imagines this character being, and hopefully I can bring the energy that he wants to what he’s written on the page.” Yeah, you do want him to be imposing and dangerous. That’s something about that character. Whenever you’re playing the villain, I suppose you want people to feel that they are dangerous.
David Corenswet recently said that, at the Paris Olympics, he won a competition between the two of you where you each tried to accurately predict the high-diving judges’ scores.
(Laughs.) He did. I can’t believe he’s sharing this information. It’s very embarrassing.
Given that you’re playing rivals, enemies and competitors on the screen, does this suggest that the two of you were also trying to create a competitive dynamic off camera?
No, we didn’t try to create a competitive dynamic off camera. David is such a wonderful guy and a brilliant actor. And the atmosphere that James’ sets have with all his collaborators is very supportive to ideas and creativity. So there was no sense of trying to create a rivalry behind the scenes. It would’ve felt manufactured and fake, and that wouldn’t have been beneficial just because of the overall atmosphere. We’re two actors that can separate what we’re doing within a scene and also support each other and what’s best for the storytelling in that moment as well. I’m there to support him, and he embodies Superman in such a wonderful way. So I’m very excited for people to see his performance. I think it’s incredible.
On top of high diving-related competitions, you did a piece with THR about your passion for racing, so you seem to be pretty competitive. Does that competitiveness ever factor into landing roles and awards?
This might sound strange, but it comes out more against myself. It’s very easy to be competitive within car racing because it’s timing and lap times. What matters is how fast you are, and that’s what I enjoy about it. In the film world, it’s more subjective, and I enjoy stepping outside of that. But, yeah, I definitely am a competitive person. I’ve just focused it more on what I can control, and that’s working harder and paying attention to the right things.
When you saw Furiosa earlier this year, did you experience some visceral reactions to some of those scenes inside the war rig? Were you transported back to Mad Max: Fury Road’s Namibia-based set?
Yeah, I was in the most wonderful way, and that’s what’s so brilliant about George Miller as a filmmaker. He does transport you, and having had an experience in that world, it was pretty magical to see it onscreen again just as a fan of it. I had read that story whilst we were prepping Fury Road. George had that script then. So it was interesting because I was aware of all those aspects of the world, in terms of the Bullet Farm and all those things. For us making Fury Road, they added scope to the world that we were creating even if you didn’t necessarily see them within the film. So it was exciting to then see the broadening of the world that George has created, and I was just excited to see that as a fan. Those movies are also such an adrenaline rush, and I was proud of Anya’s performance as well. She was fantastic in that role.
Lastly, have you still never revealed what Ralph Fiennes said to you in The Menu? Is this your Lost in Translation moment?
I haven’t revealed it, but he also didn’t always say the same thing. There were a couple of different ones that I remember, but I haven’t revealed them. It makes for a better moment to not reveal it.
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Nosferatu opens in theaters on Christmas Day.
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