If there’s one person who has a lot to celebrate this year, it’s Nicholas Hoult. The actor has had one of his biggest years yet, starring in three major films with release dates in November and December: Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, Justin Kurzel’s The Order, and Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2.
“It kind of makes sense in some ways that they were all coming out at one time, because it feels like a chapter of life that’s all combined in a bit of a blur,” Hoult, who filmed all three consecutively in 2023, tells Little Gold Men.
But the roles also couldn’t be more different. After breaking out at 11 years old in About a Boy, Hoult has proven himself an agile actor who can lead charming, funny period pieces like the Hulu show The Great and the film The Favourite; genre-bending movies like the zombie rom-com Warm Bodies and the vampire comedy Renfield; and superhero fare like the X-Men films, along with more dramatic projects like those three films this year.
In Nosferatu, which is hitting theaters on Christmas Day, Hoult plays a man and newlywed whose wife (Lily-Rose Depp) has a dark connection to a monster that’s infatuated with her. Hoult attempts to support his new family by trying to sell an estate to a mysterious figure, only to be pulled into a dark and terrifying situation. In The Order, which came out on December 6, Hoult portrays the real-life white supremacist group leader Bob Mathews, who is being hunted by the FBI. And finally, in Juror #2, he plays a recovering alcoholic who finds himself on a jury and soon realizes that he might actually have been the one who caused the death at the center of the trial.
Hoult, who will next play Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s Superman, spoke to Little Gold Men (listen below) about the stark differences between those films’ three directors, what he loves most about horror, and if he’d let his own kids follow in his footsteps as child actors.
Vanity Fair: Did you have time between filming these three projects?
Nicholas Hoult: No, they were very close together.We shot Nosferatu in Prague at the beginning of last year, and then I flew on, like, a Saturday back home, and then on Monday I had to fly to Calgary, and we started shooting The Order on the Wednesday. I had a day of rehearsal and stuff and prep and fittings, and then I started shooting pretty much immediately. Then finished that, and I came back to LA for a screen test for Superman that weekend and then flew to Savannah. On the Monday, prepped and rehearsed and did fittings, and then we started shooting Juror #2 on the Wednesday.
Is it hard for you to jump from one character to the next?
The biggest jump was working with the three different directors because they vary so much in their approach. And obviously the characters are so different, so it was kind of this thing where it would overlap a little bit: At the end of shooting Nosferatu, I’d be prepping The Order and starting to read about that and prepare mentally for that character. I’d be in my trailer at lunch on Nosferatu, but I’d be working on the accent for Bob Mathews and sending Justin Kurzel voice notes of him talking.