British star Nicholas Hoult revealed in a conversation with Hugh Grant that his Nosferatu director Robert Eggers discouraged the cast from moving their eyebrows while filming.
READ MORE: ‘Nosferatu’ remake goes “harder than any other horror film this year,” according to early reviews
The unusual piece of direction was mentioned as part of a reunion between Hoult and Grant hosted by Vanity Fair, 21 years after they starred together in the comedy About A Boy. Grant has recently won acclaim for his first foray into horror with A24’s Heretic and during the chat, Hoult praised him for infusing some comedy into his portrayal of a sinister man who traps two young women in a deadly dungeon.
Reflecting on his role in Nosferatu, Hoult said: “There’s not really too many laughs in Nosferatu, I would say. It’s Gothic Horror and Robert Eggers is such a master of creating worlds and tension. For him, it was about honesty and authenticity, but also he would give us lots of movies to watch performance wise. Lots of Soviet cinema, [Ingmar] Bergmann movies. He hates when actors move their eyebrows”.
Grant replied: “Christ, I’ll never work with him then! I can’t keep my face still”. Laughing, Hoult admitted that “the eyebrows one is sometimes tricky”.
Nosferatu had its London premiere on December 4 in Leicester Square, with Hoult in attendance alongside co-stars Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, and Emma Corrin.
A remake of the 1922 German film, Nosferatu is a reworking of Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula. Skarsgård plays a vampire stalking a haunted young woman named Ellen Hutter (Depp) while Hoult plays her husband Thomas, who is based on the character of Jonathan Harker from the novel. According to early reviews, the film “goes harder” than any other horror film released this year.
After Nosferatu, Hoult will be entering the world of superheroes next year, playing the villainous Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s Superman. As for Grant, it was revealed recently that another of his classic films, Notting Hill, had a planned sequel that was vetoed by Julia Roberts.
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