Superman's Nicholas Hoult Made His Acting Debut In This Forgotten Julie Walters Comedy

Long before Nicholas Hoult gave viewers the best Lex Luthor performance of the 21st century, he was nailing his debut movie role in 1996's "Intimate Relations." The movie was about a 20-something British lodger in the 1950s who gets caught in a horrendous love triangle between a mother (played by Julie Walters) and her teenaged daughter. Although the movie is comedic, the love triangle still ends in bloodshed and tragedy, as they are wont to do. 

Hoult plays the young Bobby, a kid who's just sort of on the sidelines, enjoying the mental health benefits that come with being unproblematic. Bobby only enjoys a few mere moments of screentime, but Hoult and his distinctive eyebrows make sure to take advantage of it, as you can see above.

Hoult hasn't spoken much about this movie, mainly because he was seven at the time and the role wasn't that substantial, but he did share one insight about it in a 2019 interview on The Graham Norton Show. "I remember the audition for that, because all I had to do was, they were like, 'sit under this table and pretend to eat cake,' and I was like, 'all right,'" Hoult revealed. "I was like, great, I can eat cake all day.'" Oh, if only every role was this easy. 

Back in the early 2000s, everyone was singing the praises of child actors like "Home Alone" franchise star Macaulay Culkin and "The Sixth Sense" Oscar nominee Haley Joel Osment. But little did we know there was an even cooler child actor around, quietly climbing that Hollywood ladder with the long game in mind. 

Hoult starred in a series of smaller TV/movie roles throughout the '90s and nailed his breakout role with 2002's "About a Boy." There he played an awkward, precocious child who tries to blackmail Hugh Grant into dating his mother. It's an impressive performance considering how well Hoult holds his own next to esteemed adult actors like Grant and Toni Collette (who plays his mother). It was the sort of performance viewers looked at and could immediately tell: This isn't the last time this kid will be co-leading a movie. 

After playing child roles throughout most of the 2000s, he starred as the lead in the first two seasons of the edgy British show "Skins." It was a little jarring watching him suddenly play a sex-addicted manipulator, but the role did successful establish him as an adult actor capable of handling heavier material. For the next 17 years he'd play teenagers, troubled young men, and a hairy, blue mutant in a Marvel movie before "Superman" allowed him to play Lex Luthor, a character who is supposed to be at least in his 30s. We've just entered Hoult's full-grown adult era, and it'll be a lot of fun to see how this plays out.