Why Nicholas Hoult Is A More Interesting Character Actor Than A Leading Man

Success as a child star is certainly no guarantee of a prolonged film career, but for a while it seemed like Nicholas Hoult would be one of the few young actors who would leap into movie stardom. Hoult was earning critical praise at age 12 for About a Boy, which would be helpful as he navigated his teen years on the highly popular British series Skins.

Hoult could’ve easily landed a recurring role within a YA franchise and probably earned a sizable paycheck. His awkward charisma makes him well-suited to be a romantic lead, and at a time when most of the most acclaimed young actors of his generation have signed up for franchises, Hoult doesn’t currently have a recurring role in a major saga now that the X-Men series is being rebooted. At 31, Hoult has a lot of options in front of him, but if his career has indicated anything thus far, it’s that he’s much more interesting as a performer when he’s experimenting with something weird.

Hoult will soon be seen as a trained assassin in Taylor Sheridan’s latest neo-Western Those Who Wish Me Dead. Whether or not Hoult is consciously choosing to take on supporting roles and offbeat projects is unclear, but he’s had more freedom when he’s not typecast as a strait-laced hero. Even if Those Who Wish Me Dead ends up being more of a crowd-pleasing throwback to 90s thrillers, Sheridan’s filmmaking idiosyncrasies are certain to at least make Hoult’s role distinguishable.

The most telling role of Hoult’s career thus far has been Nux in Mad Max: Fury Road. It would certainly be a challenge for any actor to turn down the chance to work with George Miller, but in a film where nearly everyone is swinging for the fences, Hoult’s wild performance as a fanatic War Boy who is forced to question his blind devotion to Immortan Joe could’ve easily fallen flat on its face. Nux had to be radicalized to a comically absurd degree, being both terrifying and sympathetic. He also had to sell the doomed romance with Capable (Riley Keough) as both characters relate to each other’s empathy with a childlike intimacy.

Fury Road is a miracle in countless ways, and it was a sign for Hoult that if he was working with a great director, he didn’t need to be shoehorned into the leading role. Following Fury Road, Hoult signed up to play another eccentric character for an idiosyncratic auteur in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite. The raunchy costume drama satire understandably earned most of its praise for its trio of leads, but Hoult’s Robert Harley became an unexpected scene-stealer throughout the film’s constantly shifting power dynamics.

RELATED: This Iconic 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Character Was Almost Cut from the Movie

Harley is saddled with cluing the viewer into The Favourite’s subversive vibe early on, but his recruitment of Emma Stone’s Abigail is more than just an exposition dump. While Harley’s role is mostly to move characters around like chess pieces, he also provides the setup for some of the film’s best jokes. Watching Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne collapse during a key wartime Parliament session only works as well as it does after Hoult’s hilariously exaggerated monologue praising Anne’s virtues, and it’s not the only instance wherein Hoult is required to set up a punchline for one of the leads to fulfill. It’s a challenging task, and those rewatching The Favourite might want to take notice of how important Hoult is within the film’s framework.

Yet, at the same time Hoult landed dynamic roles in two Best Picture nominees, he was also checking off the types of projects that a prospective movie star might want to have on their resume. He played the lead in what was meant to be a major fantasy franchise (Jack the Giant Slayer), he starred in one of the worst action movies of the decade (Collide), he got to play the mopey lead in an Iraq War drama (Sand Castle), he tried two doomed romantic dramas (Equals and Newness), and he failed to get any awards love for two author biopics (Rebel in the Rye and Tolkien).

It wasn’t even the fact that these were all leading roles that made this period of Hoult’s career less interesting; supporting turns in historical dramas The Current War and The Banker also cast him as earnest, well-meaning characters that are as forgettable as the films they are in. Hoult isn’t bad in any of these roles, but they showed that sticking within a lane wasn’t as rewarding as his riskier endeavors.

Obviously working with a filmmaker of George Miller or Yorgos Lanthimos’s caliber makes experimentation a little easier, but Hoult has also elevated genre-bending projects that don’t have that same prestige flare. Jonathan Levine’s name might not hold the same weight as Miller or Lanthimos, but Warm Bodies presented Hoult with a unique challenge - he has to play a sympathetic zombie. This interesting bridge between being a romantic lead and a comic undead oaf showed that Hoult could play to both of his strengths, granting the film with a touching sincerity that took advantage of the film’s clever premise for a zom-rom-com.

The forgotten dark comedy Kill Your Friends is another example of Hoult’s performance exceeding the confines of the material. The film is essentially a less insightful American Psycho clone set within the world of the 90s British record labeling industry, but Hoult’s ferociously immoral Patrick Bateman imitation is worth the watch. For someone who could invoke sympathy for a character as strange as Nux, being totally unlikeable may have been a challenge.

That same sympathetic quality is exactly what made Hoult so compelling in his best-known role as Beast in the X-Men saga. It’s a role made surprisingly human; Hank McCoy plays to Hoult’s teen heartthrob sensibilities as a gentle, yet socially isolated outsider uncomfortable within his own skin, and seeing Hank accept his own identity is one of the series’ most powerful messages. The fact that he’s a big furry mutant is almost beside the point.

Landing recurring roles that have more depth than they initially seem is where Hoult’s career is headed. He currently stars as the dogmatic Russian Emperor Peter III on Hulu’s The Great, which hails from The Favourite screenwriter Tony McNamara and fits a similar model of sexually charged, historical costume satire. This time, Hoult gets to chew the scenery as the embodiment of wealthy excess, and seeing him get manipulated by Elle Fanning’s Catherine the Great has allowed Hoult to flex his comedic muscles more than he’s ever attempted before. It’s one thing to nail a smaller scene-stealing role in an ensemble piece, but an entirely different challenge to make a devious aristocrat interesting throughout the run of an extended series.

Hoult is the type of actor that can easily evoke sympathy, and as a result it’s exciting to see him take on roles that are flawed, subversive, eccentric, and, in the case of Those Who Wish Me Dead, downright villainous. It’s no sleight to him to say that it’s more exciting to watch him delve into the unexpected, no matter how big the role might be.

KEEP READING: Nicholas Hoult & Elle Fanning Discuss Early Influences, On-Screen Firsts & the Mayhem of ‘The Great’

New 'Black Widow' Clip Brings Back Scarlett Johansson for an MCU Spy Adventure The long-delayed prequel is almost here.