Real life and fantasy merged in Nicholas Hoult’s daring on-screen escape.

The actor appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers on December 23, where he recounted a scary moment that occurred during filming Nosferatu. Hoult will star alongside Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgård, Willem Dafoe and Emma Corrin in the horror drama, which hits cinemas on Christmas Day.

Meyers noted that Hoult is “scared in much of this film.”

Hoult said that every time he has felt truly afraid in his own life, the feeling has only manifested itself internally. Therefore, it was a new experience for him to convey fear and anxiety to the outside world for this film.

At one point he felt “real fear.” Nosferatu However, this happened when he was being chased by wolves. Hoult’s character, Thomas Hutter, flees out the window to escape the wolves chasing him.

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While the people on set prepared to shoot the scene, the wolves had to be kept away from Hoult.

“I’m kind of running in place and I’m excited before the shot,” Hoult said. “And they are kept away from me on a leash – they bark as if they were dead in their eyes. They want to eat.”

Hoult added that in one shot he barely made it out the window when the wolves behind him were “released.” That shot was unusable, he said, because director Robert Eggers told him he was making a silly face. Hoult reviewed the footage himself and agreed that it was too funny for the final cut, but confirmed to the director that it was “real fear.”

When this shot was filmed, the actor realized that he didn’t know what would happen if the wolves actually got him.

“Like, I don’t know what will happen if I don’t make it out the window,” he said. “Then what are they being trained to do?”

Nosferatu hits theaters on December 25th.