As her name was read out at the Golden Globe Awards, Jennifer Lawrence rose to her feet with the languid ease of one well-accustomed to winning.
Pausing to kiss the handsome young man sitting beside her, she glided through the crowd to collect her award for best supporting actress.
All eyes were on the 23-year-old - already an Oscar winner - and at this moment the hottest young actress on the planet.
Secret: The A-list actress shares something on her phone with Nicholas. She won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress
This weekend, while his girlfriend was picking up yet more accolades at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Hollywood, Nicholas Hoult, 24, was at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah to promote his movie, Young Ones.
Cutting a rather lonely figure on the red carpet, there was only one person reporters wanted to speak to Nicholas about: Jennifer.
‘She deserves it all,’ he told journalists. ‘It’s fun to watch.’
How times have changed. For when she first met and fell in love with Nicholas, the British actor was by far the bigger star.
A young actor who had it all - looks, charm and a seemingly God-given gift for acting - he won his breakthrough role at the age of 12, opposite Hugh Grant in About A Boy.
Cue a whirl of A-list parties, a starring role in Channel 4 teen series Skins, and a clutch of offers from Hollywood producers.
When he took a role on the X-Men movie series in 2011, and began dating Jennifer, his place in Hollywood seemed secure.
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Early success: Nicholas, shown here aged 12, starred opposite Hugh Grant in About A Boy
Her role as Katniss Everdeen in teen favourite The Hunger Games turned her into one of Hollywood’s most bankable actresses, and she has won an Oscar for her role as a troubled young widow in the 2012 film Silver Linings Playbook.
In contrast, his most recent film, Jack The Giant Slayer, a mega-budget blockbuster with Nicholas in the title role, bombed at the box office when it came out in March last year.
The couple’s differing fortunes are reflected in their living situations. While Jennifer owns a three-bedroom bungalow off Hollywood’s sought-after Mulholland Drive, her 24-year-old boyfriend still lives with his parents in the Berkshire commuter belt.
Last January, the difference in their fortunes came to a head. Unable to cope with their diverging career paths, the couple split.
‘At the time, Nick wasn’t in the best of places and I guess he wasn’t that easy to live with,’ a long-standing friend told me this week.
Nicholas threw himself into work after the break-up, reading scripts, attending auditions, and enjoying nights out with friends in London. And, of course, there were other women.
He was quickly linked with beautiful blonde Australian actress Teresa Palmer, whom he appeared opposite in a utterly forgettable zombie movie called Warm Bodies.
Weeks later, he was spotted getting intimate with Italian actress Tatiana Luter in Rome.
Jennifer, in contrast, remained resolutely single.
When he wasn’t romancing actresses, Nicholas spent time at home with his parents, Glynis, a piano teacher, and Roger, who was a pilot for British Airways.
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Stardom: More recently, Jennifer Lawrence grabbed worldwide fame starring at Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games
However, with two of his four siblings - Rosie, 29, and Clarista, 22 - also in the movie business, and a mother who is convinced her darling boy is set for superstardom, home doesn’t provide a total escape from the pressures of work.
From an early age, Nicholas was marked out by his parents for acting success. His first movie role came when he was just five, appearing alongside Julie Walters and Rupert Graves in 1996’s Intimate Relations.
Six years later came About a Boy, which capapulted him to stardom.
His parents then sent him to the Sylvia Young Theatre School, and Mum was keen to wring every drop out of the opportunity presented by the Hugh Grant connection.
Nicholas was a fixture at every premiere and after-party in town, invariably accompanied by his mother.
Within a year, however, Nicholas had tired of catching the 7.10am train from Wokingham into London to get to Sylvia Young, ditching it in favour of his local comprehensive.
For a couple of years after that he led an ordinary life. At 15, when he suddenly shot up in height to 6ft 3in, he started playing basketball for the Reading Rockets.
Nevertheless, his family have nicknamed him Toad for a reason. Like the Wind In The Willows character, he has always been prone to all-consuming crazes which are subsequently dropped - and before too long he went back to acting.
What remained, however, is a desire to lead as normal a life as possible - and one out of the gaze of the public eye.
At the family home in Sindlesham, Berkshire, his previously forthcoming family declined even to answer the door this week, while locals in shops and the post office said - in what was either honesty or a piece of acting worthy of the man himself - that they had never even heard of Nicholas Hoult.
It seems that this quiet, down-to-earth side to his persona has been instrumental in bringing about a reconciliation with his superstar girlfriend.
‘The advantage of his approach to life is that he can find the time and space to get his head together,’ says a friend. ‘If he was a more showy person, in the papers every day, then I think he’d really struggle.
‘Nick got stuck into his work, blew away the cobwebs with a few nights out, and the next thing you know he and Jennifer were quietly getting back together.’
The pair reunited somewhat awkwardly when they arrived in Montreal last summer to shoot the next instalment in the X-Men movie series together.
It was here, able to walk around untroubled by fans, that they finally found the relaxed environment where they could be comfortable together in public.
When filming began, Jennifer was staying in her own apartment - but within weeks she had moved into a house with Nicholas.
The couple spent an idyllic summer together, when they were regularly spotted riding around on bikes, sunbathing in the park and taking turns to visit the grocery store.
On one occasion, a passer-by saw Nicholas, who was singing happily to himself, pause to gaze at a poster of Jennifer in a shop window ‘with a huge smile on his face’.
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Mobbed: Nicholas is surrounded by fans at the Sundance festival, but the first thing he is asked is often about his girlfriend
In November, Jennifer was in New York to appear on a nightly chat show, Jon Stewart’s Daily Show.
Uncharacteristically for her, she slipped out of the back exit to avoid fans. The reason for this could be seen sitting in the back of her limousine with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes: Nicholas.
He still has to deal with fans fawning over his girlfriend, but now seems better-equipped to deal with her stellar success.
‘You’ve never seen anything like it - people push Nick out of the way to get to Jennifer,’ says his friend.
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Small-screen heartthrob: Nicholas played wild teenager Tony in Skins from 2007-2008
‘But he handles it really well. He’ll happily take pictures for the fans while they pose with his girlfriend.
‘He’s the opposite of a Hollywood diva - and that’s one major reason why Jen’s so keen on him.
‘They’re just about the most unlikely superstar couple around - and that’s their biggest strength.’
At the Golden Globes last week, Jennifer couldn’t wait to show off her love to the world with a kiss that was beamed around the world, and a gallant Nicholas draped his tuxedo jacket over her shoulders as the night grew chilly.
And it seems that Nicholas’s recent romantic good fortune might be matched by a stroke of professional luck.
For Hollywood is buzzing with news that the actor has just been cast opposite Twilight star Kristen Stewart in a hotly anticipated remake of George Orwell’s 1984.
Another coup for the unassuming Nicholas and - who knows? - perhaps the boy from Berkshire really can hang on to the hottest girl in Hollywood.
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On the big screen: Nicholas as Hank McCoy in X-Men: First Class in 2011
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