Edinburgh reports: 'there's more to life than acting'
(Filed: 16/08/2005)
After the success of 'About a Boy', Nicholas Hoult managed to avoid the pitfalls of child stardom. Judith Woods meets him
Child stars. Who'd be one? Trapped for ever in the refractive amber of your first major role. Destined to fritter away your formative years yo-yoing between location shoots and teeny rehab, or, worse, to crèche and burn, all washed up at 13.
Drew Barrymore shot to fame aged seven in ET. She hit the bottle before she hit puberty and by 10 she would wake up in the morning and wish she were dead. Macaulay Culkin, the baby-faced 10-year-old Home Alone actor, is now 24 and still not taken seriously as an adult, despite two divorces (although, admittedly, one was from his parents).
Billy Elliot - see, I can't even remember his real name - might be 19 and playing a gun-obsessed teenage misfit in some edgy arthouse American movie, but, mark my words, those demi-pliés will haunt him for the rest of his days.
What could the future possibly hold then, for About a Boy star Nicholas Hoult, the dorky 12-year-old with the worst pudding bowl haircut in the history of cinema? Playing oddball Marcus, he was the perfect foil to Hugh Grant's feckless but likeable kidult, with his excruciating gaucheness and vaguely satanic Denis Healey eyebrows.
As I cast my eye round the trendy Covent Garden boutique hotel where we have arranged to meet, to talk about his latest film, I see no sign of Hoult, who, by my reckoning, must be all of 15 by now. I peer round a doorway, scanning the horizon for a moon-faced adolescent in school uniform and oversized Clark's.
Instead, a handsome youth stands up, towering over me by a full foot. Dressed in Levi's and Nikes, with trendily messy hair and a broad smile, Hoult, rather spookily, appears to have metamorphosed into Hugh Grant. And if I'm not mistaken he has - yes, hurrah! - taken the clippers to his Vulcan brows.
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Hoult plays the young Richard E Grant in the actor's directorial debut, the autobiographical Wah-Wah (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) - an account of his extraordinary childhood spent in Swaziland. A stellar British cast includes Richard E. Grant himself, Gabriel Byrne, Miranda Richardson and Julie Walters.
"Richard wanted me to play him aged 11 and 15, but as soon as he saw how tall I'd grown - I'm six foot two - he had a rethink and cast another boy [zac fox?]
(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)as his younger self," says Hoult.
Hoult spent seven weeks last summer filming in Africa and struck up a particular friendship with Byrne, who played his father.
"Gabriel and I were always getting the giggles, but he was really scary when he was in character," says Hoult, "drunk and screaming and shouting at me. At one point, he held a gun to my head and I could feel my heart racing. Then, afterwards, he'd just be fun Gabriel again, having a laugh."
Watches are something of a leitmotif in Wah-Wah. Grant is seen wearing two watches, one given to him by his wife, the other by his father. At the end of filming, Byrne gave one of his own watches to Hoult, engraved "To Nicholas, with love, Gabriel".
"Gabriel told me he'd bought the watch for his ex-girlfriend, but she didn't like it. She said that one day he'd find the right person to give it to, and he said that person was me," says Hoult.
"I was very touched he chose me. Maybe I'll pass it on to another young actor when I'm older."
It's not difficult to understand why Byrne was charmed by Hoult. Despite his early success and the first class jetsetting to New York, Tokyo and Madrid to promote About A Boy, Hoult is likeable, open and remains free of affectation - even of the nonchalant posturing typical of most teenage boys.
When he mentions that Hugh Grant and he exchanged e-mail addresses, I ask whether he has e-mailed the Hollywood A-lister.
"Yes, I've mailed him a few times," says Hoult.
And did he reply? Hoult looks genuinely puzzled. "Of course he replied. Why wouldn't he?" I feel like an old cynic.
Hoult lives with his parents, Roger, an airline pilot and Glenis, a part-time piano teacher, in Winnersh, Berkshire. Despite having no family connection to showbusiness, all three of his siblings, older and younger, are involved in performing, much to their parents' bafflement. Glenis travels with her son on location, but, as today, maintains a discreet distance.
The eldest Hoult, James, is 27 and doing theatre in San Francisco. Rosie, 20, is studying performance art in London, and his youngest sister, 12-year-old Clarista, has appeared in television series including Midsomer Murders.
Hoult was discovered at the age of three, by a theatre director. He was watching a play with such rapt attention that the director came up afterwards and announced that any child who could concentrate for so long on a play should be in one.
At the age of five, he appeared in Intimate Relations, with Julie Walters and Rupert Graves. His subsequent acting credits include Holby City, The Bill and Murder in Mind, and he attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School.
Hoult says he had no difficulties coming back to earth after About A Boy and his first tantalising taste of fame. His parents banked his earnings for him and, after intensive lobbying, bought him a bike.
"My experience in About a Boy probably did change me, but you change so much between 11 and 15 that's it's hard to know what had an effect on me directly," says Hoult.
"There was definitely some of me in Marcus - apart from the haircut. Definitely not the haircut. But, like him, I was quite withdrawn, and acting helped me come out of my shell."
He no longer goes to Sylvia Young, but attends his local comprehensive in Wokingham. "I've seen kids who only care about performing; it's their life and it's all they have, and it's not a nice thing to see. It's unhealthy and if you're surrounded by showbusiness, that's what can happen to you," he says.
"Acting is great but there's more to me than that. I play for the Reading Rockets basketball team, I've got school, I hang out with my friends. Acting and what not is an aspect of my life, but just one aspect."
Just before his stint in Swaziland on the Wah-Wah set, he spent three months in Chicago, filming The Weatherman, a comedy drama with Nicholas Cage. Hoult was given the role of Cage's son.
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"It's always a bit overwhelming when you arrive on set and everyone's new, but you soon become a big family. I find the hardest thing about acting is that you have to say goodbye to everyone at the end of a shoot," says Hoult.
"My mother remembers that after I filmed a Ruth Rendell mystery when I was about six or seven, I cried inconsolably for a day afterwards, because it was all over. I still feel very sad when things end, but I know that I'll probably meet up with people again at some point."
Working with Cage was, says Hoult, an education. He describes Michael Caine, who also appears, as a "really nice bloke, with time for everyone". Cage, was "very intense" and "so in the zone", he was less immediately approachable.
"But I learned so much from just watching him act. It was incredible to see what he could do even when he was barely moving a muscle."
For now, Hoult, who has a new girlfriend, is concentrating on studying for his GCSEs. Because he is under 16, a tutor accompanies him on location and he is given three hours of lessons a day.
"It doesn't sound much, but because it's one to one, you get an awful lot more done than in class," he says. "I'm not stupid, but I've never been interested in school enough to be really good at anything.
"In Swaziland, my tutor taught me to drive in a 4x4 pick-up truck. It was amazing, we were in a nature reserve and I ended up having to reverse out of a herd of rhino, which was quite scary, but they didn't seem too bothered. I may have missed out on my education a bit, but I'm learning a lot about life."
When I ask about the downside of relative fame, he immediately responds: money. "I'm constantly asked about how much I earn," he says, with well-bred exasperation. "Don't they realise it's not polite? It's just not the sort of question people ask each other and just because I act or I'm young or whatever, doesn't mean they can be rude."
I can't imagine Hoult being rude to anyone, apart perhaps from on-screen. Thanks to his gain in height, his loss of puppy fat and the presence of mind to tame the eyebrows (I suspect it was down to Glenis) he seems perfectly placed to buck the child star trend and reinvent himself.
"I hope I can keep on acting and earning my living this way, but I'll take things as they come," he says. "I think in acting you need ability, but you also need to have the right personality not to take it all too personally.
"The worst-case scenario would probably be if I never got any work again, but I'm an optimistic sort of person. I don't really do worst-case scenarios."nicholas's latest movie : Kidulthood (2005) (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)
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