Nicholas Hoult, Noted Shirtless Nosferatu Actor

In theory I could have built an entire post around the above photo of Nicholas Hoult -- hell in theory I could build an entire cult around that photo of Nicholas Hoult. I mean have you looked at it? Open it up, click on it and make it bigger -- I really recommend it. Anyway I could've been lazy and done that per usual, but I actually read the interview at L'Officiel magazine where the photo (and all of the photos down below) came from because it is a chat between Nicky and his The Great co-star Elle Fanning and those two are just so goddamned winning, ya know? On their own and together -- I'd be fine if they became their generation's Bogie and Bacall or Gaynor and Farrell or Hanks and Ryan. Just stick Nicky and Elle into a million projects -- they have sparkling chemistry.

Anyway the chat between them is indeed a delight -- they talk about all sorts of things I personally want to hear actors talk about, like the fun things they've had to learn for new gigs and what it's like having things you work really hard on getting cut from the finished project. It's a really good talk! But even better than that they talk a little -- just a little, mind you -- about Hoult's next role, which he's in the middle of preparing for. Which is his role in Robert Egger's new Nosferatu movie. And since I am contractually obligated to post every scintillating detail of information that we hear about Robert Eggers' Nosferatu between ten years ago when we first heard about it until the day it's released, I will now quote this portion of the conversation for you:

Elle: Are you doing a crazy accent [in Nosferatu]?
Nicky: You know me; I always flirt with an accent, so I was doing that. Then I was working with a dialect coach, and they were like, “Don’t do that. That’s terrible. That’s offensive.” [Laughs.] No, they were much more political about it; they’re like, “It’s good what you’re doing, but it doesn’t necessarily help us with the story.” I think it was me consciously being like, I’ve just done Renfield; I don’t want to end up in the same realm as that. But then I was like, that’s silly: Renfield is an action comedy set in modern times and is almost like a spoof, and Robert Eggers is doing a very serious Nosferatu, a Gothic horror movie. They’re different; I’ll be different naturally. But I was trying too hard. Do you ever have that?
Elle: Yeah, and you also create problems for yourself that no one else is thinking about. You’re thinking too far ahead. But you had an English accent in Renfield? 

Nicky: Yeah, but in that, I’m using more of my own voice, and the language in that is modern, whereas [Nosferatu] is more the language of the era—but not in The Great way. I don’t get to say as many funny things in this."

So what do we learn from all of that? Nothing much we couldn't have guessed already. Nicky calls it "a very serious gothic horror movie" but that's not really a shock -- it's fuckin' Nosferatu. He says he was working with a dialect coach, which implies he's not playing a British character, and he says that they're using the language of the era -- also not a big surprise given it's an Eggers film and in an Eggers film historical accuracy is the order of the day. So I guess what we can take from this is the movie we want Robert Eggers to make here is the movie that Robert Eggers appears to be making.

Y'all... I couldn't be more excited about this. I really don't care that it's a retelling of a thing we've seen told perfectly three times previously -- there is a dusty Victorian nightmare version of this movie, all faded daguerrotypes and muttonchops, that's in my head that I am dying to see Robert Eggers spill across a movie screen. But that's still ages away, sigh. So we'll hit the jump and stare at these pictures of Nicky, for now...