Charlize Theron’s vital on-set chemistry with Nicholas Hoult: “I would do every movie with him”
Over the course of her career, Oscar-winner Charlize Theron has worked with just about every A-list star in Hollywood. She’s appeared opposite the likes of Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Viggo Mortensen, Nicole Kidman, Chris Hemsworth and Keanu Reeves – but none of those icons is the actor she claims she’d love to have alongside her in every movie.
The actor in question starred with Theron in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, but surprisingly, it isn’t Tom Hardy. While their tensions on set are well-documented—particularly in Kyle Buchanan’s Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road—this actor had a different relationship with Theron. Hardy and Theron’s friction during filming is infamous, with accounts of their strong personalities clashing during the intense production process, leading to well-publicised disputes between the two.
In the pages of that tome, first assistant cameraman Ricky Schaumburg revealed, “Tom is very provocative. Charlize isn’t. And it was a clash.”
Editor J Houston Yang went one step further by claiming, “We get dailies sometimes for specific sequences if we need to cut a shot longer, and some of that was the chain-wrench fight by the tanker. And boy fucking howdy, was it clear that those two people hated each other. They didn’t want to touch each other, they didn’t want to look at each other, they wouldn’t face each other if the camera wasn’t actively rolling.”
To be fair to Theron, in the clear light of day, she admitted, “It was horrible! We should not have done that; we should have been better. I can own up to that. Now, I have a very clear perspective on what went down. I don’t think I had that clarity when we were making the movie.”
Theron did have one ray of sunshine on that movie, though: Nicholas Hoult. The young English actor is the person Theron said she’d like to work with on every project, and that very summer, she teamed up with him again in the thriller Dark Places. Going from one movie to another with Hoult was music to her ears, as she told Front Row Features, “He’s just a really great guy, and he’s incredibly talented.”
If anything, it sounds like Hoult was something of a comfort blanket for Theron on Fury Road – a shoot she readily admits was a tough, gruelling experience. She revealed, “We joked around…we were kind of stuck in the same environment that entire film. We didn’t really have that much to do in our downtime. We just really liked each other.”
What is it about Hoult that Theron gravitates to, though? Well, it sounds like the answer is a bit of everything. She explained: “He makes making movies fun. There’s something about him that I thoroughly enjoy. He’s stupidly talented. I feel that way about him today. I would do every movie with him.”
Indeed, Theron actively pitched Hoult to Dark Places director Gilles Paquet-Brenner as soon as she read the script. It was one of the first ones she responded to after finishing up on Fury Road, and the thought of working with her buddy again was too compelling to resist. She explained: “I was like, ‘This would be amazing if we could make this with Nick.’ I think he was such a great asset to have.”
