With his grueling schedule, a mere mortal would snap — or at least look like hell. But the amazing Hugh Jackman shows up looking, well, amazing. Definitely not like he’s been on an exhausting nonstop media tour for weeks, hitting Japan, South Korea, and London among many other locations to promote his new movie, The Wolverine, the sixth X-Men installment in which he plays the clawed and flawed mutant superhero.
True to his reputation as one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, the Australian superstar arrives at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles composed (in black jeans and boots), gracious (in spite of the fact that he has just flown in from Comic-Con in San Diego), and accommodating for a couple of hours of face time with C&I before literally jetting off to New York for the premiere of his new movie and a little time at home.
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While his wife, Deb, and their children, Ava and Oscar, enjoy gourmet cupcakes at Sprinkles in Beverly Hills, Jackman genuinely charms his way through wardrobe, makeup, and four different photo setups, one of which has him climbing slippery rocks in brand-new cowboy boots to pose in front of a waterfall. Even with the ticktock pressure of catching a plane that’s wheels up in just a couple of hours, Jackman makes time for personal conversations with museum staff. He’s never been to The Autry before, and, obviously impressed with the Western collections, he plans to take the museum up on its offer to open on a Monday just for his family on a return visit.
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You’d never know it from his ego-free manner, but Hugh Jackman might just be the hottest entertainment property on the planet. With his daredevil grin, gorgeous green eyes, fit physique, and all-around jaw-dropping singing, dancing, and acting talents, he’s already garnered an Emmy, two Tonys, and a Golden Globe among numerous other awards. And with the July release of the blockbuster The Wolverine, the September release of Prisoners, and the summer 2014 release of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the superstar/superhero shows no signs of slowing down.
Although his choice of roles appears surprisingly diverse, we suggest to Jackman during a recent interview that he seems to pick characters who right wrongs — roles that have a cowboy sensibility, whether the part calls for boots and a horse or not. Case in point, the most recent installment in the X-Men saga.
“It’s funny that you mention cowboy,” Jackman says. “When James Mangold, the director of 3:10 to Yuma, came on board to direct The Wolverine he told me that he really saw this movie as The Outlaw Josey Wales.” The protagonists of both stories are antiheroes in search of their identities after the violent deaths of their loved ones, but the comparison was initially lost on Jackman.
“I felt a bit embarrassed because I’d never seen the movie, so of course he made me sit down and watch it. There certainly is that el-ement to Wolverine — the classic outsider who comes into town. In this instance the ‘town’ is Japan [where Jackman’s character is training with a samurai warrior], and you can definitely find western components in the story. I’ve always seen Wolverine as very three-dimensional. Yes, there is a lot of action, and, yes, there are special effects, but I see him as more story-driven than most of the other X-Men characters.”
In Prisoners, the actor stars as Keller Dover, a working-class Boston father who kidnaps the man he suspects is behind the disappearance of his young daughter and her best friend. “The beauty of Prisoners is that it does live in the gray areas of right and wrong,” Jackman says. “There are some great twists and turns and some very bad people in the film, but the director really focused on what happens to families and other people involved in that situation — how they cope under that extreme pressure. Anyone who is a parent realizes that they are capable of doing almost anything to find their child — whether it be inside or outside of the law.” To wit, the desperate dad he plays in the high-powered cast (Maria Bello as his wife, Terrence Howard and Viola Davis as the parents of the other missing girl, Jake Gyllenhaal as the detective on the case) takes matters into his own hands in an almost frontier-justice kind of way.
You could say it’s another manly role in the long list of gray-area heroic types Jackman has played over the years, including the Down Under trail boss, The Drover, in Australia; the vigilante monster hunter, Van Helsing, in the movie of the same name; and, of course, the tormented superhero Wolverine. And who can forget Jackman’s recent turn as the emaciated Jean Valjean, who tries to return to a normal life after being imprisoned for stealing bread to feed his sister’s children in the film adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, a role that netted him a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination.
You could hardly ask for a more multi-faceted superstar. Which begs the question everyone seems to ask about Hugh Jackman: Is there anything the guy can’t do?
The Jackman mystique began in Oklahoma! Born in Sydney in 1968, he got his start in Australian musical theater productions. But it was his “sensational star-making performance” as Curly in the critically acclaimed 1998 London revival of Oklahoma! (filmed for PBS) that brought him international recognition and an Olivier Award nomination for best actor.
Jackman’s Hollywood break soon followed when he was cast as Wolverine in Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000). The movie catapulted him to mainstream nonmusical stardom, and he has since reprised the role in box office hits X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and X-Men: First Class (the film franchise has made nearly $2 billion worldwide, not to mention the millions it is sure to earn from The Wolverine and next summer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past).
Despite his considerable stardom, Jackman has defied celebrity odds, remaining committed to his wife of 17 years, Deborra-Lee Furness, whom Jackman calls “the greatest woman I’ve ever met” and with whom he has adopted two children, Oscar and Ava. It really does seem like there’s nothing the actor, father, and husband can’t do. Including riding a horse convincingly.
But that wasn’t always the case.
When Jackman was cast in the role of The Drover opposite Nicole Kidman in director Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (2008, and by the way, the second highest-grossing Australian movie of all time, behind — what else? — “Crocodile” Dundee), he knew he’d have to up his game in the saddle. Set in northern Australia at the beginning of World War II, the movie tells the story of Lady Sarah Ashley (Kidman), an English aristocrat who inherits a cattle station the size of Maryland. With no ranching experience, and plagued with ongoing rustlings, Lady Ashley partners with The Drover to drive her 2,000 head of cattle to safety. The role required tremendous riding ability, which Jackman frankly admits he didn’t possess. Up to that point, his experience on a horse consisted of working with a trainer for six weeks, six years earlier, to prepare for the riding sequences in 2001’s time-travel romance with Meg Ryan, Kate & Leopold.
“I felt that I rode fine in Kate & Leopold, but when it came to my role in Australia, it was clear to me t
Source: https://www.cowboysindians.com/2013/10/hugh-jackman/
