Nicholas Hoult Says He Lied To Get ‘Mad Max’ Role
Nicholas Hoult has admitted to lying to land his role in the new Mad Max movie, New Magazine reports.
During his audition, Hoult was instructed to tell a story. He couldn’t think of anything so he borrowed a true-to-life wedding disaster story he’d heard from his friend and fellow actor Liam Cunningham.
The story goes a little something like this.
“The bride got grease on her skirt and they got petrol filtered out of a tank to get this grease off and then they poured it down the toilet,” Hoult says.
“She was fine, she went down the aisle. But then the grandad of the family, he liked to smoke a pipe, so he went to the toilet at one point… sat down on the toilet, lit his pipe, had a puff and then threw the match in the toilet and it exploded. He had to be carried out on a stretcher.”
Hoult said about how he told the story, “It was, like, this huge disaster story, and the whole time, like, the casting director was looking around the camera, going, ‘No way’.”
“I told it as if I was there. I lied.”
He was obviously very convincing. Hoult got the role of Nux, a psychotic thug who’s set to wreak havoc on screen in Mad Max: Fury Road. Nux belongs to the pack of reckless War Boys working for tyrant, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who captures Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy).
This is sure to be a breakout role for the former child actor who has become known for playing an unassuming Hank McCoy in X Men: First Class and X Men: Days of Future Past.
You probably won’t recognize him as Nux, though. Throughout the film, Hoult wears head-to-toe makeup to depict the character. He’s bald and his face is meant to look as skull-like as possible. Hoult’s body is painted white and there’s a tattoo of a V8 engine block etched into his chest. As Inquirer.net notes, it’s a far cry from the cherub-faced boy audiences first met in About A Boy.
“Makeup is a great addition to that because the main thing is that you see how people react to you differently (with makeup on),” Hoult said in a chat with hosts at Siren Studios on Sunset Boulevard in LA.
Nicholas wasn’t the only person to go through a drastic physical change for a role in Mad Max. Charlize Theron shaved her head to play her character, Imperator Furiosa.
“That’s always the thing with any character—you always want to disappear into it so people watching don’t think about whatever they might know about you as a person,” Hoult said.
Mad Max: Fury Road, starring Nicholas Hoult, Tom Hardy, and Charlize Theron premiered today.
Photo Courtesy Warner Bros Pictures
