Since it was revitalized by a cash injection from Indian firm TATA, Jaguar has been spending lavishly on publicity events featuring top celebrities. In one of the latest efforts they took British actor Nicholas Hoult to a sand pit in rural Sardinia where he completed the ‘Smart Cone’ challenge in an all-wheel-drive Jaguar XF.

If you don’t know what the smart cone challenge is, watching the video below will make it clear. It’s not very interesting. But Nicholas Hoult agreed to do it anyway because Jaguar’s relationship with the celebs is a mutual one. The car maker has a prominent present in Hoult’s latest movie Collide, where one of the characters played by Sir Ben Kingsley drives a Jaguar F-Type.

Nicholas said: “I’ve loved getting behind the wheel of the new Jaguar XF AWD R-Sport. Driving scenes in films can be a challenge – everyone expects you to be a superstar even behind the wheel and I’m definitely not a pro driver – so it’s good to be able to put my skills to the test in a safe environment.The XF AWD R-Sport is great – it does a lot of the work for you. I was driving on a particularly challenging surface with lots of sand and dust but the car just gripped and performed. It was really fun to be able to compare driving the car here to some of my driving experiences when filming and hopefully I’ve done myself justice!”