Wolfman Jack: Hugh Jackman returns to the role that made him famous

It’s hard to believe now, but there was a stretch when many folks in Hollywood wondered how song-and-dance man Hugh Jackman could possibly conjure up the machismo of Wolverine for the first X-Men movie.

Mind you, back then the enthusiastic Jackman was mostly known for his acclaimed performance as Curly in the musical revival of Oklahoma! at London’s Royal National Theatre. When he arrived on the X-Men set in Toronto 10 years ago, he looked exactly like the nice guy everyone had heard he was.

So the question was: How could a musical-comedy entertainer play a violent, thuggish mutant superhero?

Jackman answered the doubters with a bravura portrayal of Wolverine, which he repeated in the film’s two sequels, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. The trio of X-Men movies scored with critics and earned a whopping $1-billion (U.S.) at the box office.

“Silly rules only become evident when people break them successfully,” says Jackman in a recent interview at L.A.’s Four Seasons Hotel.

Jackman is ready to break a few more rules as headliner and producer of the ambitious spinoff, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which opens on May 1st.

The Gavin Hood-directed prequel is set two decades prior to X-Men, and most of the action takes place before Wolverine’s skeleton is injected with the indestructible metal adamantium. Still, you can count on Wolverine to be the muscle-bound tough guy we grew to know and love in the other X-Men movies.

The new special-effects-laden blockbuster focuses on the Weapon X program, Wolverine’s violent past, his early encounters with military scientist William Stryker (Danny Huston, in the part previously played by Brian Cox), the wisecracking mercenary Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), and Wolverine’s confrontation with his arch-nemesis, and half-brother, Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) over the death of a girlfriend.

“The whole experience, from taking on the lead to being the producer was fantastic, and Gavin is a great director,” Jackman says of Hood, whose brutal drama Tsotsi, about a South African gang leader, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006. “He’s very strong and has a great understanding of the journeys the characters take.”

Understanding character was important for Jackman from the start. It’s why he was hands-on during the casting process, and in the pre-production phase. “These superhero movies, whether they are dark or not, all live or fail by their attention to the players in the movie and their stories and all the other stuff that makes them who they are. All the special effects and the superpowers are terrific, but that isn’t at the heart of what’s important to the folks who like these movies.”

Even though Jackman learned the importance of character from his three previous X-Men movies, don’t expect this film to simply mirror those that came before. For instance, it was Jackman’s idea to hire well regarded indie actor Liev Schreiber to play the villainous Sabretooth, although it took a little gentle persuading on Schreiber’s part.

“I read the comics before I got offered the part,” says Schreiber. “I mean, I knew the character really well. But initially Hugh had asked me to play Stryker and I asked Hugh, ‘Is there any chance that I might be able to play this Sabretooth guy?’”

Turns out there was. And just as some questioned whether music-man Jackman could pull off Wolverine, some skeptics snickered at the choice of Schreiber for Sabretooth. Schreiber thinks that’s exactly why Jackman wanted him, that he could relate to the “counter-casting of hiring me, this serious-minded fellow playing a savage supervillain street fighter.”

In the end, the Wolverine-Sabretooth confrontations are the film’s centrepiece, insists Schreiber. “The fight scenes are fantastic,” he says. “And Hugh really helped me all the way through with them.”

Perhaps Jackman’s background in musical theatre was actually a boon to mastering the physicality of a brawling character like Wolverine. The production was a gruelling physical and psychological experience, but this six-foot-two hunk was formally educated in the art of putting on a good show long before he became a Tony Award winner, movie star, host of the 2009 Oscars and People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.

Born in Sydney, Australia, to English parents, the young Jackman attended the private Knox Grammar School where he starred in a musical production of My Fair Lady. He graduated from Sydney’s University of Technology with a degree in communications and then it was on to the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

In the 1990s he had a journeyman’s life co-starring in musicals and cabarets, and winning bit parts on Aussie TV shows and in movies, but it wasn’t until his 1999 breakout in the London musical Oklahoma! that he started to get noticed.

Not long after that Jackman was chosen as a last-minute replacement for Dougray Scott as X-Men’s Wolverine, which was released in the summer of 2000 and instantly transformed the theatre man into a movie star.

And, although this fourth turn as Wolverine came with brand new responsibilities, one aspect of the production actually made this X-Men movie easier for Jackman — it was filmed in New Zealand and Australia, near his of home of Sydney.

For a change, he was making a movie by day and returning home at night to his wife Deborra-Lee Furness and the couple’s kids, Oscar, eight, and three-year-old Ava. Certainly, the family experience has been life changing for him.

“Oh, yeah, it makes you learn about yourself. I think it also makes you learn about your own parents,” he says. “I’ve found myself in moments when the things coming out of my mouth sound exactly like my dad, and some of those things I swore on my life that I would never say.

“It’s the most annoying thing and it’s sort of bizarre,” Jackman adds, “But being a father has meant more to me than I ever expected.”

So filming close to home was good. Being the star was good. Being in charge was good. Having a say in casting was good. It seems like there was no downside to spinning off on his own for the first of several planned X-Men Origins pics.

Well, Jackman admits, except for one thing. “I did miss Halle Berry.”

Bob Thompson lives in Toronto, where he writes about movies and filmmakers.

Wolverine, eh!

Wolverine made his full-fledged comic-book debut in The Incredible Hulk #181 (November, 1974) battling the big green monster. His backstory was limited to the fact he was superhuman, had claws, and was a Canadian government agent. Wolverine’s Canadian heritage remains in place today — in both the comic books and films.

But there was a time in the late 1970s when Marvel Comics was thinking of dropping Wolverine from the X-Men series entirely, that is until Canadian comic book artist and writer John Byrne — who was brought in to revamp the series — fought to keep Wolverine, stating that he didn’t want to see a Canadian character axed.

~Ingrid Randoja