Nicholas Hoult and Jude Law were kept apart for the first few weeks while they were filming new thriller 'The Order'.

The actors star in Justin Kurzel’s crime movie with Law playing an FBI agent named Terry Husk tasked with investigating a white supremacist group called the Order with Hoult playing the group's leader Bob Mathews - and the pair were not allowed to meet until their filmed their first scene together to amp up the tension.

During a screening of the film in Los Angeles on Tuesday (15.10.24), Hoult told the audience: "We’d shot for three, maybe four, weeks before that [first meeting].

"It added to the energy on set, where I’d get a little buzz. The crew loved keeping us separate, and everyone was like, ‘Jude’s going over here. Keep Nick [away!]’ It got me all jazzed up."

Law also spoke about the film - which is set in the 1980s and is based on a true story - and insisted the themes are just as relevant today.

He said: "It was a terrific script with so much potential: the relevance; the timely nature of the themes within it; the fact that, in many ways, it’s oddly a sort of origin of where we are now, which we thought was a good way of investigating it without being too heavy-handed.

"Then, of course, it is folded into a genre movie. And that was something, when we got our director Justin Kurzel onboard, that became really apparent.

"He was very clear that he wanted to lean into the genre of the thriller and the cat-and-mouse element, but really elevate it through character and through truth and storytelling."

Speaking at a press conference at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday (31.08.24), Hoult previously revealed the actors were also given secret tasks by the director.

He explained: "I’ve never … prepared in this way before, where Justin gave us tasks. I just found out on the boat here [that] one of Jude’s tasks was to follow me for the day. I just found out. But he was trailing me for a day and I didn’t know about it."

'The Order' is based on the book 'The Silent Brotherhood' Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt which was released in 1989 and tells the story of a string of increasingly violent bank robberies as well as counterfeiting operations and armoured car heists that terrify frightens communities throughout the Pacific Northwest in 1983.

The film hits cinemas on December 6.