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.
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.
