By I'm nearly hit by a bus on the way to meet Nicholas Hoult. As it sails past I see it's covered with his face in the poster for Tolkien.
"I’m so sorry," he says, vaguely mortified, when I tell him about it. "Was it one of those life-changing moments where you thought: 'this is it'?" He starts laughing, "I suppose if it was, you wouldn’t have come here."
Hoult is in London for the UK premiere of his latest film, a biopic of J. R. R. Tolkien in which he plays the author during his days at school in Birmingham and later at Oxford University. As a young boy he lost his mother to illness, and as a young man, his closest friends during WWI.
It was the mythic bedtime stories his mother read him that inspired the epic quests of books like The Hobbit, and the brutality of war, as witnessed through a bout of trench fever, that inspired the dark and mystical battles of The Lord of The Rings trilogy.
Though the writer's relationship and eventual marriage to Edith Bratt (played by Lily Collins) is the love story in the film, Tolkien is more powerful when it focuses on the fellowship between friends which, it supposes, is what spurs him on to write.
"The idea of loss is something that’s very important to the story," Hoult says. "These friends have this idea of changing the world through art and that is something he takes forward after losing them."
Hoult has a schoolboy charm about him that puts you at ease, often appending an 'actorly' comment with a funny caveat. Aside the recently drained ginger shot in front of him, you wouldn't know that he's left behind Berkshire for California, where the 29-year-old lives with the model Bryana Holly and their young child.
He was a fan of Tolkien growing up, playing card games based on the books after school and eventually watching the Peter Jackson directed films. "I got given The Hobbit on the set of About a Boy and I’ve still got that copy at home," he says. "I read it again in preparation for this and it all felt slightly fortuitous in a weird way, coming around like that."
In About a Boy he played a oddball with a pudding bowl haircut called Marcus who stalks, then befriends, vain and selfish bachelor Will (Hugh Grant). His turn as the mawkish boy was so good, it was hard to believe he was really anyone else.
Hoult sounds slightly dazed when recalling how it felt to become famous at 12 years old. "I remember doing SMTV Live and being at a shopping centre later that day and being recognised. You know that thing where you’re going down an escalator and people see you? It’s obviously slightly weird."
Five years later, with barely a trace of the alpaca cardigan-wearing Marcus, he appeared in in Channel 4's breakout series Skins, a no-holds-barred exploration of the drug taking and sexual proclivities of a group of teenagers in Bristol.
In it he played Tony Stonem, a character that, were he assessed through the post #MeToo lens of today, would certainly be read as problematic, carelessly manipulating friends and cheating on his girlfriend.
The Skins alumni have gone on to impressive and era-defining work, with Joe Dempsie and Hannah Murray appearing in Game of Thrones, Daniel Kaluuya fronting Oscar-winner Get Out and other cast members, like Dev Patel and Jack O'Connell, becoming household names. What was it about the show that spawned so many British acting talents? “They got a good group of people together and the writing was so brilliant," he says. "There was no pressure on it, we just did it and had fun." Though it's more than ten years since the show ended, Hoult maintains they are still some of his best friends and says he feels lucky they all got to grow up together.
His real coming of age performance was playing a student called Kenny, who becomes entwined with a depressed university professor called George (Colin Firth) in Tom Ford's A Single Man. It was the first of a series of interesting roles, one of which was opposite Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in the George Miller-directed Mad Max: Fury Road.
Instead of using green screen, Mad Max was filmed in-camera meaning what you see on screen wasn't added later on but happened in-front of the actors eyes. This meant a lot of hanging off lorries to create the scrambling race depicted in the film, which apparently suited Hoult. "Mad Max was all very real," he says. "So a wonderful experience for that because normally you’d have to pretend."
Though his next project is appearing in superhero film X-Men: Dark Phoenix, he admits it can be difficult to act when you're unsure what exactly you're facing. "It’s weird because essentially, being an actor is just being delusional and creating weird things in your mind," he laughs.
Tolkien seems to be a happy blend of both, for the most part focusing on actors in real life settings, but with the occasional CGI creature appearing like a hallucination on the battlefield. "One of Tolkien’s greatest assets was his imagination, so you can disappear into what he might have been seeing," he says.
A week before its release the Tolkien Estate distanced themselves from the film, claiming it did not "approve of, authorise or participate in the making of" the biopic. It joins a string of disputes about the legacy of the writer's work after the estate sued the studio behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and later Warner Brothers for gambling and video games using Tolkien's characters.
I ask if it's hard to take on the role, knowing how much Tolkien's work means to so many people. "You take it all on board and as a fan myself it's something you respect and want to honour," he says. "The more research you do, the more you feel an affinity for the character, but ultimately you have to play the reality of what those scenes are."
Fortunately he didn't face the same problems when appearing in The Favourite - the upside to playing an 18th Century Earl, called Robert Harley. Hoult is brilliant as bewigged and uppity Harley, casually shoving Abigail Masham (Emma Stone) into a ditch when he's had enough of what she's saying.
It's a riotously rude film, and from the accounts that the cast have given, appears to have been just as much fun to film as it was to watch. "I relished every moment on that set," he says. "To then have it do well and be received the way it was was made even better by the fact it was such a lovely experience."
The crowning moment of its award season run was Olivia Colman beating the odds to win 'Best Actress' at the Oscars for her portrayal of Queen Anne. Receiving the award she gave a speech that bought the house down and made those those still awake in England a little misty-eyed.
“She is this pure, wonderful person who works incredibly hard and takes it seriously but never takes herself too seriously," he beams. "She has an incredible ability to be herself and that’s inspiring."
Another highlight of the night was the Dior origami suit that Hoult wore to the ceremony which featured a stylish sash as part of the design. "Men’s suits can get a little bit boring after a while" he says. "You can do different colour or fabric but this was bold and different silhouette."
"Don’t get me wrong though, there’s a moment when you’re putting on a sash and you go ‘What am I doing?', but I thought it was a great bit of design," he pauses and stifles a laugh, "And I could make puns with it like saying it was sen-sash-ional."
'Tolkien' is out now.
