BOY
TO
MAN
A lunch date
with fiercely
private
actor—and
new father—
NICHOLAS
HOULT.
By Phoebe
Reilly
HOULT STARS IN
MAY’S TOLKIEN
AND THIS MONTH’S
DARK PHOENIX.
W
hen he was 11, Nicholas Hoult received a gift that proved to be prophetic: On
the set of 2002’s About a Boy, directors Chris and Paul Weitz handed him a
copy of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The book left an impression on the young
actor, as did Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy—“The films are burned
into my retina,” Hoult says—though in preparation for portraying the revered author,
in May’s illuminating biopic Tolkien, he realized that his grasp of the philologist’s dense
mythology had loosened. “I wouldn’t say I retained a lot,” he admits, adding that it was
a nice homework assignment to revisit the novel.
It’s a chilly afternoon in Hollywood, and Hoult, 29,
has arrived early for lunch, dressed in a blue bomber
jacket and jeans. Traces of the cherubic misfit he played
in About a Boy are still visible, though his eyebrows now
flare upward like quotation marks to add a bit of ironic
detachment to his handsome porcelain features. His de-
meanor is closer to that of a blind date than a child actor–
turned–movie star whose diverse résumé includes the
CULTURE
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