Maybe Hugh Grant Shouldn’t Have Let 11-Year-Old Nicholas Hoult Pick Out His New Car

In Reunited , Awards Insider hosts a conversation between two Oscar contenders who have collaborated on a previous project.

Nicholas Hoult was just 11 years old when he filmed the beloved 2002 film About a Boy opposite Hugh Grant. At the time, Grant was at the peak of his rom-com-palooza, having starred in Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary, and with Love Actually about to come out the following year.

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In the film, Grant plays a carefree bachelor who meets a precocious 12-year-old boy and, despite his resistance, they form a bond. The film became a classic due mostly to the charm of its two leads. And as they reveal, the pair had just as much fun together off camera. Grant bought Hoult his first golf clubs as a wrap gift; Hoult says he got to help Grant pick out his next car. “I loved cars,” says Hoult. “I remember I’d go out and buy car magazines, and I’d bring them to work and be like, ‘I think you should get this one.’” Grant ended up buying an Aston Martin Vanquish. “It was a terrible choice of yours, actually. It broke down, humiliatingly, the whole time,” says Grant.

Since then, Hoult has made the transition to adult actor, starring in the X-Men films, Warm Bodies, The Favourite, and the Hulu series The Great. He’s now in the midst of his busiest year yet, with three films currently in the awards race: The Order, Juror #2, and Nosferatu. The trio of films speaks to Hoult’s versatility. In them, he plays a white supremecist who is being hunted by a detective ( Jude Law ); a juror who discovers he may have been the cause of a woman’s death; and a man whose wife ( Lily-Rose Depp ) is in love with a vampire in Germany in 1838.

Since About a Boy, Grant has also widened his scope of roles. In the last few years, he’s taken on dark dramas, like the TV series The Undoing, along with playing an Oompa Loompa in 2023’s Wonka. This year, he stars in Heretic, a horror film about a reclusive man who is visited by two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The film was a critical hit at Toronto before being released by A24 in November.

They’ve come a long way since About a Boy, but as Grant and Hoult reveal, that film still holds a special place in their memories. Hoult even admits that some of Grant’s signature style may have rubbed off on him. The charming pair also speak about the different directors they’ve worked with over the years, how the business has changed, and what happens when they each get recognized in public.

Vanity Fair: What do you remember about the first time you met?

Nicholas Hoult: It must’ve been the screen test for About a Boy .

Hugh Grant: Yeah, maybe baby.

Hoult: “Maybe baby?”

Grant: That’s the sort of thing I say.

Hoult: It’s just been a while since you called me “baby.” [ Laughs ] I don’t actually remember the screen test at all, because I think when I’m in high-stress scenarios, I kind of panic and don’t take in anything of what’s happening. So I don’t have any recollection of it apart from, I know that I had to wear a school uniform, but I didn’t go to a school that had uniforms at the time. So I borrowed my mom’s old boat shoes, but we painted them with a marker. I remember looking down during the audition, and seeing that the ink that we’d painted the shoes with had come off on the white socks that I was wearing. And I was like, oh, this is a disaster.

Grant: I don’t remember your audition very well. I just remember we all thought, Oh, great, we’ve got him. He’s brilliant. He’s fantastic.

Can you talk a little bit about where you were in your career when About a Boy came about, Hugh?

Grant: My career was quite healthy. I’d done all those rom-coms. For About a Boy I felt, “Oh everything is going to see a new side of me.” I cut that ghastly hair off, and I’m doing an accent in that film.

Hoult: What accent were you doing?

Grant: Sort of North London. I remember the story of About a Boy was, it had been bought by some other people and they were going to make it into a film, and I put my little hand up—I loved the book. And they said, “Sorry, we don’t really like you.” And then they lost the rights to the book. It went to Robert De Niro and his company, and they said, “We like you very much.” That was nice. And we set it up there, and then at the last moment, all the money fell through. It was going to be made by New Line at the last moment. I dunno, they decided they didn’t want to make it, and so we shopped it around. Everyone wanted to make it.

Hoult: You got me my first set of clubs as a wrap gift from About a Boy. Do you remember that? And you signed the golf bag as well.

Grant: Charming.

Hoult: I can’t remember what you wrote. I think it was just your name.

Grant: It’s better than the wrap present I gave to my son on The Undoing , which was a box of cigars. His mother was furious.

Hoult: How old was he?

Grant: 11.

Nick, how did About a Boy influence your career?

Hoult: That gave me a great start. But I was very aware as a kid of the fact that child actors don’t make it as adult actors very frequently. So there was also this awareness of “maybe this isn’t going to work out”—which was quite a strange feeling to take on that young. But I think it did influence me quite a lot in terms of the person I am, and the actor I am. I didn’t notice I was doing this, I wasn’t consciously doing it, but I did this TV show called The Great —

Grant: Yeah, you were marvelous.

Hoult: Did you ever think that I behaved and spoke and did things like you?

Grant: I read reviews that said you did, but I don’t see that at all.

Hoult: I wasn’t consciously doing it, but I think occasionally there were little things, because it was such an influential part of my life working with you—and looking up to you. It’s not an impression of you, but I think there are little things occasionally that are almost my interpretation of how you would do it. Does that make sense?

Grant: Well, that’s nice of you to say. It’s funny how early influences can seep into you as an actor, and then reemerge when you least expect them. You don’t even know you’re doing it. My first triumph as an actor was imitating our chemistry teacher, Mr. Hammond, at school. He always had his hands deep in his pocket and he’d say, “You boys need to come and have a shower.” I find it sometimes when I’m struggling with a role, I suddenly realize I’m creeping into Mr. Hammond again.

You’re both starring in horror films this year. What attracted you to those stories?

Grant: What do you think is a better horror film— Nosferatu or Heretic ?

Hoult: They’re very different. I liked Heretic a lot. And you were brilliant in it, very charming and funny as always. How did it come about?

Grant: Two lovely weirdos from Iowa wrote and directed it, and I just thought it was quite brave. So talky—it breaks all those rules about film having to have pithy, economical dialogue and be in lots of different locations. It’s really only one house. I thought that’s a challenge, but I did think I could have some fun with him—making him into a groovy professor, the kind of guy who thinks he’s kind of down with the kids and makes jokes about contemporary songs and films and things.

What’s most enjoyable and most challenging about getting the tone right in a movie like that?

Grant: I thought if he thinks he’s fun and he’s quite jokey, but his real aim is diabolical, then what’s coming will be all the more ghastly.

Hoult: That’s how the tension builds in a nice way. And you get some good laughs.

Grant: Yeah, there’s a few laughs.

Hoult: There’s not really too many laughs in Nosferatu . Robert Eggers is such a master of creating worlds and tension. For him, performance-wise, it was all about honesty and authenticity. But then also he would give us lots of movies to watch, Soviet cinema and Bergman movies. And he hates when actors move their eyebrows.

Grant: Christ, I will never work with him. Then there’s [ Juror #2 ]. Is it true Clint Eastwood only does one take?

Hoult: Pretty much—one take, maybe two. And he doesn’t say action or cut. He’s just like, “whenever you’re ready.”

Grant: I love that. I have a pavlovian reaction to “action”. Stephen Frears has a very bad “action” habit. He goes, “1, 2, 3, ACTION!” I find those very frightening. So I would’ve loved Clint.

Hoult: You’d appreciate how he works, because sometimes if you’re just hanging out and sitting there, he’ll just start. You won’t even notice. The camera’s rolling, and it’s all very calm and relaxed.

Grant: The older I get, or as the years rolled by with filming, keeping everyone calm is 90% of the battle, particularly actors. Just keep them calm, keep them loose. And it’s so hard.

Hoult: Do you think you are calming?

Grant: Did I calm you on About a Boy ?

Hoult: I don’t remember. You probably did. But I feel like you care. I remember you caring and wanting to do maybe more takes and try things.

Grant: I think it was a big change for me when I realized it’s a mistake for film actors to think, “this is how I’m going to do it. I was excellent doing it in my trailer just now, or in the bathroom last night, and I must get that one when we roll camera.” That’s a huge mistake. And I did that for years, and I think it’s much better to have some vague idea of what the scene’s about and know the lines and then completely make it up when the camera rolls. That was a big change for me.

Hoult: Clint Eastwood was kind of similarly minded. I remember one time him walking by me on set and he said, “What are you thinking?” And I said, “Absolutely nothing.” And he said, “that’s my kind of actor,” and walked on. That was it.

Grant: You are brilliant in The Order. And I’ll tell you what is annoying: I don’t really like anyone being good in anything—I just feel jealous instead of pleasure. But your American accent is so good now. Because you live here, maybe that helps.

Hoult: Also, I found recordings of Bob Matthews, the character that I was playing, so I could kind of locate the exact sounds he was making. I found the recording a week before we started shooting, and it was kind of higher pitched and a bit weaker and raspy. And I was like, “Hmm, that’s not what I imagined.” So then I went to [director] Justin [ Kurzel ], I played it to him. He made us send voice notes to him as the characters.

Grant: Really?

Hoult: He’d be like, “send me a list of all the guns you’ve got and how you feel about America.” I was filming another movie before it, and I’d go into my trailer at lunch and switch into that accent and then send him all these creepy voice notes. So I played him Bob’s actual voice and he was like, “no, I prefer the voice you’ve been working on.” So we just stuck with that.

Grant: I watched the trailer of Nosferatu . It’s very calm and very menacing.

Hoult: I’ll tell you what was weird, was going from Robert to Justin to Clint as directors. Robert, we shot on film, everything’s very specific, and frequently there was one or two shots through a scene. So you’d sometimes do 25 takes. Justin was much more laid back and loose, and throwing cameras up and improvising. You’d leave the set and you’d be like, “oh, there’s a version of that scene where my character’s really nice and warm and kind of friendly.” But then there’s the other version where he is a cold, calculated ,manipulative killer. And then you’d go to Clint’s set, and it would be one, maybe two takes, and you’d trust that he was happy. I had a weekend between each of those jobs, so it was very weird switching gears that quickly.

What’s better about working in the business today, and what’s more challenging than the days of About a Boy ? Hugh, I read you hate phones on set.

Hoult: I read that, and I was kind of in agreement. It has made it a little bit less social in a way.

Grant: You think of About a Boy, and our cast and crew cricket match at the end—all those films in those days, it was a party by the end. It was a bunch of people who knew and liked each other, and went on liking each other for a long time. And all that’s gone tragic.

Hoult: What else has changed for you since you started, in terms of making films or just the press process?

Grant: Well, the press process—that’s massively different.

Hoult: I feel like our press tour for About a Boy was so fun. We were in Japan and all these places. I don’t think I’ve ever really done a press tour quite like that since.

Grant: It’s true. This was the early 2000s, and I remember maybe the next year or the year after doing one with Sandra Bullock. She was very well-known then. I was pretty well-known. But we could be on a press tour and go to a nightclub, and go mad. That would be completely unthinkable now.

Hoult: You know what? You invited me to the premiere of that [ Two Weeks Notice ] in London. And I came, but this was actually another weird, horrible memory in some ways because someone stood there and they handed me a glass of champagne or something. I stood there, and then someone asked for a photo. And then I remember the next day, The Daily Mail had run a big article. I was on the train home from school, and I felt so self-conscious that it was kind of this horrible piece about me and maybe my parents as well. I felt like everyone on the train was watching me and or knew stuff about me, and thought I was a terrible person.

What movie do people stop you for on the street, or what movie do you wish they stopped you on the street for?

Hoult: I have a film of Hugh’s that I think is underappreciated: Mickey Blue Eyes. I love that movie so much.

Grant: That’s so nice. It’s not perfect. But there are scenes in that film which are great. Mobsters in New York still come up to me [about it]. We worked with a lot of mobsters when we made the film. They were great. They could do anything. We had a man called Rocky Sausage, because he used to be a butcher or whatever, and he was our liaison man with the mob. If you’re filming on the streets of Manhattan and there was a problem with helicopters ruining the soundtrack, he’d say, “give me the phone.” And he’d take the phone. He’d call JFK, the control tower—no more helicopters. All gone. What do you get stopped for? X-Men ?

Hoult: Not too much, because I was mostly in big blue furry prosthetics for that. I don’t really know if I get stopped that much—I think normally it’s mistaken for somebody else.

Grant: Are you nice when you are stopped and someone says, “can I have a selfie?”

Hoult: I think I’m nice. This is 10 seconds out of my day. And if it makes their day better, even if they think I’m someone else, then that’s fine. I’m a little bit more protective if my kids are about. What I don’t like is when people take photos without asking. And they do that thing where they’re on the phone and then they’re suddenly looking at their phone like that, and you’re like, I can tell. Are you nice?

Grant: Did I ever tell you about the man? I stopped for petrol somewhere in Long Island and the guy who I was paying said, “you know what? You look like that Hugh Grant—no offense.”

Hoult: [ Laughs ] None taken.

Grant : A lot taken!

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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