The Mad Max: Fury Road actor, who recently completed the Italian auto manufacturer’s intensive Corso Pilota driver-training course, recalls a life of adventures on four wheels—including that time he got in a crash while dressed as Posh Spice.

Nicholas Hoult has been playing with cars for as long as he can remember. The actor—best known for his starring roles in About a Boy, Skins, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Great, and the X-Men movie franchise—told Vanity Fair that some of his earliest memories revolve around “sitting on the floor with toy cars and pretending to race them around and crash.”

Hoult is now living out his childhood fantasies. Working with Italian super-car manufacturer Ferrari over the past couple years, he has participated in the brand’s intensive, four-part Corso Pilota driver-training course, on three different racetracks around the U.S. This recently granted him the privilege to get behind the wheel of a Ferrari 488 Challenge Evo—a 670 horsepower, track-only, twin-turbocharged monster that the prancing-horse brand builds for its customer-focused Challenge racing series—and pilot it around the Circuit of the Americas track in Austin, Texas.

Though he’d completed the thorough training, driving a race car still required a steep and surprising learning curve. “I mean, I couldn’t even figure out how to turn it on at first,” Hoult said, laughing. “But, even going back before starting it, just getting in and out. I’m not a small person. And I was looking at the car, and there was a roll cage and everything. And I was, like, I’m not sure how to get in and out of this.”
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After finding global fame with 2002’s About A Boy, Nicholas Hoult decided not to pursue acting.

However, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Friend of the Brand came back, garnering a string of successes in a career that has become emblematic of how we sometimes need to hold back to propel forward. Discovered at age three by a theatre director when he tagged along with his siblings in the theatre circuit, Nicholas Hoult would later shoot to international fame with his stellar turn as the oddball son of a suicidal hippy mother in 2002ʼs About a Boy.

Three years later though, during a stint at the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London, Hoult decided he did not want to pursue a career in acting, but merely dabble in it as a hobby while he pursued more traditional academics. Yet fame called on him again. He was nominated for Best Actor for his role in the television teen drama Skins.

THE TURNING POINT

Feeling overwhelmed by the attention, Hoult almost retreated, but ultimately decided to take the plunge. It is said that child actors don’t usually go on to become successful adult actors, but Hoult would find his first role as an adult actor in Tom Ford’s 2009 directorial debut A Single Man.

The film earned Hoult a nomination for the BAFTA Rising Star Award, and the English actor has remained on an upward trajectory since. He has well and truly established himself with a slew of iconic roles, most notably as mutant superhero Hank McCoy, aka Beast, in the X-Men franchise.

In 2021, he played Peter III in Huluʼs original series The Great, a role which has earned him a Golden Globe nomination in the category of Best Television Actor in Musical/Comedy Series for two consecutive years. That same year, coinciding with 90 years of Reverso, JaegerLeCoultre released The Turning Point, a short film in collaboration with Hoult.

Filmed in Switzerland by French director-cinematographer Théo Gottlieb, it is a beautiful reflection on life’s turning points and a mirror of Hoult’s own journey. AugustMan caught up with the actor-philanthropist in an exclusive interview to talk about those pivotal moments that determine whether we remain as we are, or change gears to go further.
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The A-list celebrity shot to fame in About a Boy and in a recent podcast he discussed what life was like when he was a child and what’s it been like to become a father

Nicholas Hoult appeared on a podcast on Valentine’s Day where he talked about life as an actor, including where he went to school and how he deals with social anxiety.

Hoult grew up in the village of Sindlesham in Wokingham, Berkshire, and shot to fame at just 12-years-old when he starred alongside Hugh Grant in About a Boy.

The actor has now been in the film industry for 20 years, but he’s a relatively private person and doesn’t often discuss the depths of his life.

However, on the podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, the celebrity shed some light on what his life has been like ever since he shot to fame all those years ago.

Now 32, the A-lister has a three-year-old and discussed how his life has changed following his son’s birth.

Hoult said that it’s “really fun” being a dad and revealed that life as a father has made him realise that having a kid requires you to be a “different level” of fitness.

On the podcast, Hoult and Shepard also talked about what it was like for him when he was growing up.

Dax noted that Hoult was “basically raised by women” as he grew up mainly around his sisters and his mum.

He then said that he wishes all men could be raised in an environment with lots of women and Hoult agreed with this sentiment and said: “It’s been good for me.”
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