His filmography includes supporting work in big-budget mainstream productions and starring roles in independent projects in American and British films.

Hoult played the title role in the adventure film Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) and a zombie in the romantic comedy Warm Bodies (2013).

He had a supporting role in the action film Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and portrayed various historical figures such as Robert Harley in the black comedy The Favourite (2018) and Peter III in the Hulu comedy-drama series The Great (2020–2023).

Outside of film, Hoult voiced Elliot in the 2010 action role-playing game Fable III and appeared in the 2009 West End play New Boy.

He nonetheless decided to participate in the early rounds of auditions and was eventually cast in the role of Marcus, a "woolly-hatted, oddball son of a suicidal, hippy-ish single mother, [who] gets bullied horribly at school".

Hoult starred in Richard E. Grant's semi-autobiographical film Wah-Wah (2005) as Ralph Compton, a boy who is forced to deal with the disintegration of his family.

He was initially sceptical of his ability to play Tony Stonem, a manipulative, egocentric anti-hero, and identified more closely with the supporting character Sid.

[23] Critic Elliott David lauded Hoult for his performance in a 2016 retrospective review, and wrote that he "maintain[ed] the inexplicable core of his character throughout".

[25] He later made his West End theatre debut as Mark, the protagonist in William Sutcliffe's coming-of-age play New Boy; the production premiered at Trafalgar Studios and had record-breaking ticket sales, which was mostly attributed to Hoult's popularity among viewers of Skins.

Dominic Cavendish of The Daily Telegraph wrote that his performance was persuasive, but Lyn Gardner of The Guardian found him average and highlighted his inability to bring out the "unresolved sexual tension beneath [the] banter".

He was eventually cast in the role of Hank McCoy / Beast for the X-Men film series owing to his ability to play somebody "gentle with a capability of being fierce".

[47][48] Although it was the lowest-ranked production in the entire series in terms of revenue, Chris Aronson of 20th Century Fox deemed it "an excellent start to a new chapter of the franchise".

Miller had conceived Nux, a terminally ill slave, as a "quasi kamikaze pilot"; Hoult said of his character; "he's very enthusiastic and committed and affectionate but also kind of clumsy".

[52] Fury Road opened to critical acclaim on 14 May 2015 and grossed more than $378 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the Mad Max franchise.

[53][54] Shalini Langer noted that while the real hero of the film was Charlize Theron, "[Hoult] is the closest in the acting department ... as Joe's 'war boy' chasing imagined glory".

[57] In 2013, Hoult had starring roles in two major films; he first played a zombie named R in Jonathan Levine's romantic comedy Warm Bodies, which was released on 1 February.

Levine said he had difficulties finding a suitable actor to play R until he met Hoult, who was attracted to the project—which he described as "much more than a horror movie" owing to the use of multiple pop culture and literary allusions—and even more so to the role which "bowled [me] over".

[59] To prepare for the role of a zombie, Hoult and the other actors practised with Cirque du Soleil performers; he said of the experience; "we would take our shoes off in a dance studio ... kind of grow out of the wall and make our bodies feel very heavy".

[61] Ben Kendrick praised Hoult for the restraint in a potentially Razzie-worthy role: "[he] brings a lot of life to R without stepping too far in the other direction [and although his] zombie mannerisms may come across a bit forced but, overall, his memorable moments outnumber (and outweigh) the awkward ones.

[63] Hoult's next film, Bryan Singer's 2013 fantasy adventure Jack the Giant Slayer, failed at the box office and received mixed response from critics.

[73] X-Men: Days of Future Past earned more than $747 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the series and in Hoult's career at that time.

[82] The action film Collide, in which Hoult starred as a drug dealer, was released in the United States in February 2017 to a poor response from audiences and critics.

[83][84] The film garnered negative reviews; its dismal box office performance was attributed to poor marketing and multiple delays caused by the 2015 chapter 11 bankruptcy of its production company Relativity Media.

[86] He highlighted the misogyny and sense of entitlement in the entertainment industry, writing that director Eran Creevy and Hoult would get better offers despite the failure of films like Collide, as opposed to the women and other minority groups, who are either ignored or stereotyped.

[87] The production had its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; it stars Hoult as one half of a Los Angeles-based couple who meet through online dating and begin an open relationship.

[88] Drake Doremus, the film's director, said Hoult's role was unlike his previous work; "a very complex and emotionally mature performance that we haven't seen yet".

[91] Hoult auditioned for the role because he was intrigued by the film's script and Salinger's enigmatic personality; "I didn't know he fought in the second world war and landed on D-Day: ... had intermittent PTSD or that he became interested in Vedanta philosophy and meditated and did yoga.

[93] Carson Lund of Slant was largely unimpressed by Hoult's "feeble" performance and his inability to "reinvest the character with the complexities lost in the story's programmatic telling".

[98] In a departure from biographical dramas, Hoult then starred as an American soldier in Sand Castle, a production he described as a very different war film "in terms of the pacing and the emotion ... very under the surface, that futility-of-war idea".

He encouraged customers to buy the festive collection and support the charitable cause, which he thought would bring a "real change to children's lives".