Toni Collette played a mom in movies before she was one in real life, so she’s paid special attention to the career rise of her “About a Boy” co-star Nicholas Hoult.
Twenty-two years after appearing with Hugh Grant in the coming-of-age dramedy, Hoult and Collette got a kick out of being cast together again in director Clint Eastwood’s new courtroom drama “Juror #2” (in select theaters Friday). And on their first day of filming – in a moment of emotion and confrontation – Collette felt very much in the scene but also “like a proud mother.”
“Like, oh, my God, look at my boy go! He was so good,” she recalls in an interview alongside Hoult. “He’s become like this incredible actor.”
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Hoult adds that it was “such a strange, weird dichotomy of feelings for me. My character opens the door and it’s Toni and your face that I know so well, but we haven’t really seen each other for 20 years. But I feel like I know you so well. My brain was buzzing with a lot of things, but I knew that I was very happy to be there.”
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“Juror” casts Collette as a Georgia prosecutor whose district attorney aspirations ride on getting a guilty verdict in a murder trial while Hoult is a reluctant juror inextricably connected to the actual crime, and both face a series of moral quandaries.
It’s definitely a different dynamic than in “About a Boy,” where Hoult was a British youngster who makes friends with a wealthy man-child bachelor (Grant) as his mother (Collette) struggles with her mental health.
“It was so special to reunite,” adds Hoult, 34, who felt excited to “go back to work with someone who made me feel very happy and safe when I was a kid.” Collette says she ran into him once and he told her, “Every time I see you, there’s my mom.”
And it’s the same way for Collette when she watches him in movies like “Mad Max: Fury Road” or “Warm Bodies”: “Nick’s grown into a completely different evolved self, both as a person and as an actor.” (Hoult also recently saw Grant in LA, telling the older performer that he played in Eastwood’s golf tournament. “He was like, ‘Oh, I’m very jealous of that.’ And then I told him I wasracing with Ferrari and he was like, ‘I’m jealous of two things.’ ”)
Hoult and Collette’s reunion has involved meals and drinks together during and since the movie’s shoot, and even swapping Eastwood tales. When Hoult tells her about the time in 1951 when the Hollywood legend was an Army private in a military bomber that went down in the Pacific Ocean and he had to make his own way to shore, Collette’s only response is “Whoa.”
Working with Hoult again has also reminded Collette, who turns 52 this week, of “the elasticity of time.” The Australian actress was 28 when making “About a Boy,” a role that followed her breakthroughs in “Muriel’s Wedding” and “The Sixth Sense” (which earned her an Oscar nod) and a project that feels “so recent and so far away.” Hoult himself was on his second movie and only 11 during filming, when acting was just “a fun hobby” for the Englishman.
“I still kind of view it as that,” he says with a laugh. “They still let me do it and I love it, so I’ll keep going. But also at the same time, you’re a kid. You’re like, ‘Yeah, I want to do the scene, but also there’s someone with a ball and a bat over here, and I want go play and do all these other things.‘ ”
“I feel lucky to keep doing it because I was aware of everyone talking about the fact that kid actors don’t frequently get to do it as adults,” Hoult adds. “Just kind of a weird thing to know when you’re that age, being set up potentially already to fail. So I feel especially grateful I’m still enjoying it and learning from it and growing.”
Like Collette, Hoult became a parent in the ensuing years since “About a Boy.” He finds that fatherhood has “actually given me this new source of creativity in a weird way, where I enjoy the process more, but then also turn off from work easier and prioritize. There’s like a different level I’m working on that I really enjoy.”
His impressive upcoming slate reflects that, with key roles in “The Order” (out Dec. 6) and “Nosferatu” (Dec. 25), plus he plays supervillain Lex Luthor in next year’s “Superman” (July 11). “If you told me 20 years that that’s where I’d be, I’d be beyond thrilled and happy,” Hoult says.
He also needs to make some time for Collette, who’s itching to do something else with her movie son. “To have this opportunity has been incredible,” she says. “Now we just need to do it a third time and make it a hat trick.”
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