The whole package

It’s a bit unfair that the universe decides to give some people the double blessing of talent AND incredible good looks.

All those singers who write No.1 songs and the actors who play Oscar winning roles who are super hawt as well …

Take Nicholas Hoult … who wouldn’t …

He’s ridiculously handsome and also an excellent actor. I’ve been admiring him over the past few weeks in a TV series called The Great.

He got his big break in About A Boy when he was just 11, opposite Hugh Grant and Toni Collette.

But I didn’t discover him properly until about nine years ago, when he starred in a zombie flick called Warm Bodies.

As Rotten Tomatoes describes it: “A terrible plague has left the planet’s population divided between zombies and humans. An unusual zombie named R (Nicholas Hoult) sees his walking-dead brethren attacking a living woman named Julie (Teresa Palmer) and rescues her. Julie sees that R is different from the other zombies, and the pair embark on an unusual relationship. As their bond grows and R becomes more and more human, a chain of events unfolds that could transform the entire lifeless world.”

It used to be my kids’ favourite movie … I have no idea how I thought it was appropriate viewing when they were seven and nine respectively, but they’ve always been oddly comfortable with on-screen gore.

The last time I watched the movie was in 2015 and I had the confronting realization that I related to R.

I was lifeless like him for so many years. My limited emotion was channelled into loving my kids. Everything else felt a bit John Cougar Mellencamp “life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.”

That sounds horrible, I know, but it was painfully true – I wrote whole blog posts about not knowing whether I was happy or not.

Tip: if you’re not sure, you’re not.

Anyways, Hoult is pretty fab in The Great, though I’m a little late to the party, as the first season was released in 2020. I stumbled across it in the DVD section at JB HiFi a few weeks ago. I am so old school.

The darkly comical historical drama stars Hoult and Elle Fanning as Emperor Peter III and Catherine the Great.

I reckon part of the reason I like it so much – other than my long-term affection for its star – is that it’s based on a play by Aussie writer Tony McNamara, which premiered at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2008. McNamara created the TV series and writes the episodes with a Novocastrian.

Its star Fanning reckons Hoult has more than just talent and looks going for him: “He’s so handsome and tall. Those are few and far between … tall movie stars. He’s so funny. He’s so attractive. And he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s just the whole package.”

That’s an embarrassment of riches.

I raced through the first 10 episodes of The Great, and I really recommend it – it’s funny and fascinating and horrifying all at the same time.

The only problem I have now is that season 2 is on Stan. DD has Stan, but I’m not sure The Great is his kind of thing. He’s more of a Mystery Road kinda guy.

I’d also watch DD on screen over Nicholas Hoult any day. I was in a Zoom meeting with him for a freelance project we’re working on together and it was so hard to concentrate – I was transfixed!

Isn’t that awesome after more than seven years together?