Nicholas Hoult Reveals More About His Role As Beast In X-Men: First Class!

In an interview with IGN Movies, the actor has talked more about his role as iconic X-Man Beast in the upcoming prequel from Matthew Vaughn and we have a few of the main highlights below. To read more, including what he thinks about becoming an action figure and much more, click on the link below to head on over to the site.

I play Dr. Hank McCoy and he later on becomes Beast. He's a young scientist - a very clever guy - but a little bit shy and awkward around the girls and just socially awkward around the group. He's a good guy, but it's hard work. He's a great scientist though and he comes up with all of these inventions that sometimes work and sometimes don't, and then he tries out a serum from Mystique's DNA to try and stop his feet from appearing apelike and massive, so he can fit in because he's very self-conscious about it, and unfortunately that goes wrong and he becomes the Beast that we know from the other films and cartoons and comics. He's very urbane and witty and a shrewd guy. It's fascinating to see the difference, when he becomes the Beast, from this very animalistic and scary-looking character. The Beast we've got is very different to Kelsey Grammar's Beast. People are quite intimidated by it, and it's great to have that with the contradiction of the character with somebody who's not that comfortable with himself.

The costume is four hours. It's a mask, which is stuck onto my face with a headpiece, and that takes the majority of the time, getting it to look right with the teeth and contact lenses. They've done a fantastic job creating this face that moves with my expressions. I have to make the performance bigger underneath it, but it moves a lot. They give me a muscle suit, obviously, and that's pretty much the gist of it. Lots of fur, which I eat a lot of by accident.

There was a lot in the script for the scenes Hank's in, but you can never do enough preparation. So I read a lot of the comics again and went over and tried to pick out words that he used a lot to try and build into the performance. The more you learn, the more you could say, 'No, I don't think he'd say this,' and just have more to play with, rather than making it up as you go along. Obviously, this character's not the same as in some of the comics, where he's a football player/athlete character and a bit of a jock. He's different in that sense.

I get some very cool action. Azazel and I have a great fight at one point. So far the stunts that I've done I've been rubbish at. I took a big hit on my head, and a big hit on my foot so far. Spinning around on wires and stuff. There's definitely some very cool action. I'm in the Beast suit for the final fight, which we're about to shoot in Georgia, and that's going to be very tricky negotiating the suit and the heat and everything.