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Hear are some interviews I found on the net just click down
 How did you get the part of Marcus in "About a Boy"?
I went to the first audition, which was with the casting director, and got a recall for the next audition where I met the two directors, Paul and Chris Weitz. I didn't know they'd done big films like "American Pie" so I wasn't too nervous, but the third audition was the scariest as I was meeting Hugh Grant. I had the worst butterflies and couldn't sleep the night before but somehow I got through it. When I found out I'd got the part, I jumped around the house not believing that I'd got it.
What was it like working with Hugh?
Hugh was brilliant. He helped me a lot by giving me ideas and teaching me something new every day. He really helped me get into my role. He's my idol now. Him and Jim Carrey - I'd like to work with him one day.
Did you have a good time on set?
We had loads, but one that is particularly funny is the dead duck scene. In this scene I throw a rock hard loaf of bread at a duck that my mother [Toni Collette] has baked for me. I thought they were going to use a fake duck but they brought a real dead duck along which had died of natural causes! They had to tie a weight around its neck to make its feet stand upright in the pond. It was the funniest day. Another time we were shooting a scene where Hugh and I are playing snooker and I was just meant to make sure that the white ball stays down one end of the table so that he could stay on camera for his shot, but I actually got it in! Hugh couldn't believe it.
What was it like working with two directors?
I thought they'd be bashing each others heads in every day on set, but they really work well together. I think they're almost kind of psychic as one would come up to me and say "I think it would work better if you do it like this", and then the other, without seeing his brother, would come up and say the same thing! It was strange but really worked because they are both on the same wavelength, they know what they want and have double the number of ideas.
Would you like to carry on acting?
Yes, definitely, I love it. I'd like to stick to comedy as it's great fun, or an action movie like "Lord of the Rings".
"I expected Hugh to be an old-fashioned English gentleman," says Hoult, who's previously done TV and theater across the pond. "I only saw Bridget Jones's Diary after I met him."
Watching Grant's wicked turn in Diary probably would have worsened the lad's jitters. Little did he know the superstar was even more intimidated by the prospect of acting opposite a child!
"If someone said, 'Why don't you hang out with a kid for the afternoon?' my hair would stand on end," Grant confesses. "I'd have no idea what to do."
For his part, Hoult seems to have shed his starry-eyed view of Grant. Now, he'll even venture to criticize the guy's career! Laughing precociously, he pipes up: "I saw a movie of Hugh's on TV the other day The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain and I turned it off because it was actually quite awful!" Sabrina Rojas Weiss
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NEW YORK -- Nicholas Hoult, the child who co-stars with Hugh Grant in About A Boy, can tell you all about the rigours of auditioning for a film.
"I was actually quite annoyed," says the articulate Hoult, who is 12. "It was all taking over my drama lessons." Then there was another audition, this time with Hugh Grant, "And that was really scary." And then there was the audition where he was told to wear his school uniform. "But I forgot my shoes. So I took a pair of my mom's white shoes and coloured them with a felt pen. I didn't realize at the time that the black had rubbed off on my socks." He got the part.
Hoult is Marcus in About A Boy, playing an oddball kid who gets teased a lot at school. His single mom (Toni Collette) is a depressive. What's a child to do?
Marcus attaches himself to the least likely candidate, a vacant bachelor interested only in himself (Hugh Grant). The boy and the man eventually change each other's lives.
Hoult has been acting since he was about three years old, but this is his biggest role ever. He has done a few TV series, had a part in the film Intimate Relations, and was a choir boy and has appeared with the English National Opera. His first play, he says, he can never quite pronounce -- but it was The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Was Hugh Grant a good mentor on the film shoot?
"He's kind of corrupting, actually," says Hoult. "He got me into golf. I didn't like it at first, but it's quite fun to play."
In fact, Grant also taught him to improvise, says the child actor. "He changes things around and adds to the scene. It's hard to keep up with him."
(Not so, says Grant, "He'd always go along with me, and rather to my annoyance, often top my line.")
About A Boy had a very glossy premiere in London in Leicester Square. It was, says Hoult, both exciting and scary.
"It was crazy. I was getting really bad butterflies. I just stuck to Hugh." About his own performance he says, "I don't like watching myself. I get embarrassed."
(His tip for not laughing during funny scenes: "I have this little thing. I bite the inside of my mouth. Really hard.")
Posters and ads for About A Boy mean that people have begun to recognize Hoult on the street. "And that's really weird," he says gravely.
Hoult, who has three siblings, all of whom are actors, says he became an actor by accident. When he was a little boy he was watching a play. "And a director was watching me watch the play."
As career plans go, he says he admires Haley Joel Osment and would like one day to work with Christopher Columbus. "And I quite like Jim Carrey. He plays such different parts."
On his own time, Hoult plays the piano, used to play trombone and says he likes to listen to music. His mother is a piano teacher. "I like pop sometimes, as long as it's not too cheesy, as most of it is," he says. "My parents do play some dodgy music," he says, smiling. "My mom's obsessed with classical music."
Master Hoult will next be part of an anti-drinking campaign for British TV.  |
