Crossword Dictionary
NICHOLAS HOULT
Nicholas Carandoc Hoult, (born December 7, 1989) is a British actor who was perhaps best known for playing Hank McCoy (“Beastâ€) in the X-Men series of movies and Nux in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).
Hoult was the great nephew of British stage and screen star Dame Anna Neagle. His father was a commercial pilot, his mother taught piano, and his three siblings all had acting experience. Hoult made his feature-film debut in Intimate Relations, but it was his second film, About a Boy, that brought him international attention.
Hoult’s career as a child actor was brief, however, because in the span of three years he grew to a height of 6 feet 3 inches (1.9 meters). As a teen, he portrayed Tony Stonem in the British TV drama Skins before American fashion designer Tom Ford lured him to Hollywood to appear in Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man. In 2013 he appeared as a zombie in Warm Bodies.
Hoult’s first action film was Clash of the Titans. He then physically transformed himself beyond recognition to play the Beast in X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and X-Men: Apocalypse. He underwent another transformation for his role in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. In 2015 Holt also starred with Kristen Stewart in Equals.
Hoult’s later film credits included Collide, Sand Castle, Rebel in the Rye, and The Favourite. During this time he also lent his voice to the animated TV miniseries Watership Down. Hoult’s credits from 2019 included Tolkien, about the early years of the famed writer. The following year he appeared in The Banker.
In 2020 Hoult returned to television with the debut of two series: The Great, a fictionalized dramedy about the rise of Catherine the Great, and Crossing Swords, an animated comedy in which he voiced a peasant who becomes a squire. He then played a killer hunting a young boy in the action-thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead. In The Menu, Hoult portrayed a pretentious foodie.