Nicholas Hoult: I prefer hanging out with women to men

Nicholas Hoult has opened up about life with girlfriend Bryana Holly — and says he prefers hanging out with women to men.

The former child actor, who had his breakout role in 2002’s About A Boy, has been dating the US-based Playboy model since March. He previously dated Jennifer Lawrence, his co-star in the X-Men films, for five years.

Hoult lives at his flat in north-west London and said he was relaxed about Holly, 24, moving her things in. He told The Journal magazine: “I don’t feel as though I’m that possessive over things. She can put her stuff wherever she likes.

“My dad was an air pilot so he was flying a lot, and I grew up with my two sisters and my mum so I was used to ‘girl things’ being around and a ‘girl environment’ in the household.”

Hoult, 27, who found wider fame in E4’s teen drama Skins, said some of his closest friends were women and that his relationships with them have a “different balance” to those with his male friends. He added: “I’m probably more likely to — I mean it’s such a big generalisation — but sit around and have a conversation in more depth. My female mates will ask questions I hadn’t thought of.”

Hoult is no stranger to altering his physique for roles and had to lose weight to play a gaunt Nikola Tesla, the electrical engineer, in forthcoming film The Current War. He is now in the middle of a hot yoga routine which will allow him to bulk back up to reprise his role as Beast in X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

“When you’re playing a character called the Beast in X-Men you kind of have to,” he said. “For The Current War they asked me to lose some weight, so I just didn’t eat as much, which is miserable.”

In The Current War, he stars opposite Benedict Cumberbatch — who plays the inventor Thomas Edison — and took science lessons with the Sherlock actor, 41, to prepare for the role. Hoult said: “We were both pretty lost. [He] said that I did better than him [at one lesson] but I don’t think I did... I was trying to understand electromagnets and dynamos and all those sorts of things.”

On the sexual harassment scandal, Hoult said: “I feel, more and more with everything that’s going on in the news at the moment, a responsibility to pay more attention, to be aware of those things and to change them because that’s not how I want the world to be. And when I read about those things, I’m like, ‘That’s horrendous’.

“You’ve got to be able to put yourself in other people’s shoes and see things from different perspectives, otherwise you could have a very different view of the world.”

Read the full interview in The Journal at mrporter.com.