Lex Luthor is a maniacal villain, but he comes with layers. There are different ways that an actor can get into the character’s head space. So I asked Nicholas Hoult on the Superman set where his Lex draws his power, and the X-Men: First Class actor told CinemaBend:

"That's a really bolstering sort of thing to happen," Hoult tells EW. One of the first Lex Luthors that Nicholas Hoult remembers seeing as a kid is the one played by Michael Rosenbaum on Smallville, the CW series featuring Tom Welling as Clark Kent/Kal-El in a high-school coming-of-age setting.

James Gunn's Superman may have found its perfect Man of Steel in David Corenswet now, but there was another actor who was almost set to play the Kryptonian hero, and surprisingly, it was Nicholas Houl