Why a heartthrob's first date with his wife was a festival for over-50s

Nicholas Hoult has finally told the story of how he met his wife, model Bryana Holly. And their first date wasn't dinner. It was a music festival where, by his count, the average fan was over 50.

"It was kind of an over commitment first date," the actor, 36, admitted on Jake Shane's podcast, Therapuss.

It's a rare peek into a marriage he has kept almost entirely private for 10 years.

The pair met in Los Angeles in 2016, while he was shooting a movie, and then ran into each other again at a pre-Halloween party, Just Jared reported. They got talking about music, and one festival came up.

It was Desert Trip, which ran in October 2016 on the same site as Coachella and nicknamed "Oldchella" for its line-up of rock legends.

'Make sure neither of us are complete lunatics'

"There was this thing called Desert Trip coming up," Hoult said. "It only happened that once."

He reeled off the line-up: the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Roger Waters and Paul McCartney. "Every night was two legends played. Average age of people who went to this festival were 50 plus years old, was seated, and we had tickets for every night."

So a pair who barely knew each other signed up for the whole thing. But first, a test run.

"We didn't really know each other, but we both wanted to go," he said. "We went to dinner once before just to be like, 'let's make sure neither of us are complete lunatics.'"

It clearly worked, and the date that started with a dinner and a sanity check turned into a decade. They've been together since, and he first called Bryana his wife in 2024, confirming they had married in secret.

'Four under 7'

Then last week came the bigger surprise. His How to Rob a Bank co-star Pete Davidson let slip on Entertainment Tonight that the couple now have four children.

"He's a great dad," Davidson said. "Father of four. Four under 7." Hoult simply confirmed: "Yeah."

"Which is nuts," Davidson went on. "Elsie was pregnant while we were filming and he had just had his twins and he would fly back every weekend to go see his family and that was really awesome."

The couple had never announced the twins. They already share a son, Joaquin, 7, and a second child born in 2022.

Fans had suspected since March, when Bryana mentioned on her Instagram Stories, after the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, that she was breastfeeding. Davidson's slip was the first confirmation of the twins.

Hoult's kids do know their dad is famous, he told ET, because he jokes that he's too famous to make them breakfast.

His new film, the heist thriller How to Rob a Bank with Zoë Kravitz and Davidson, is in US cinemas from Friday.