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Updated 4/29//03
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We're Hangin' With..... Hugh Jackman: The Gallant Wolverine by: Lynn B.
When the actor showed up for our interview, he looked very dashing, dressed in black sweater and pants and sporting a longer haircut because he is shooting the new vampire hunter film Van Helsing. Okay, note to myself: 'You will be professional. You will be professional'….Of course, due to extreme Hugh-gazing, our first question was pretty dorky but it gets better. Hugh tells all. AGW: Is this your Van Helsing hair? Hugh: I had to take the extensions out because after three months they start to show; so this is them out. They were considerably longer, to my knees. Not really but they were pretty long, Charlie's Angels long. Hugh's superpower of choice? He'd borrow it from Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler: "As long as I didn't have to do nine hours of makeup, I'd take Alan's teleporting. I'd just whip back to Australia. Wouldn't it be nice at lunch to say, 'Let's go for a swim'? Especially as I have to go back to Prague on Wednesday [for Van Helsing]. AGW: Okay, all your castmates talk about how nice you are. Hugh: I've got to stop that immediately; my career will be over in about two years. AGW: Do you have any secret vices? Hugh: [grins and raises his eyebrows] I'm sure I've got my little secrets, but mystery is all part of the game, isn't it? I don't want to give you too much. It's weird. I'm sure at times I can be grumpy and I can have my say, and there's times where I've yelled on the set and done all that, and every time I do it I'll hear my dad, and it doesn't matter how famous or successful you get, all I hear is him saying, 'Hugh, come on, pull yourself together, pull your socks up, stop being so supercilious.' He was English and he had these ridiculous adjectives about behavior and manners and everything. He used to say supercilious all the time and I used to die laughing. Pull your socks up. AGW: Was there a time when you almost went down a dark road? Hugh: I remember when I first went to college and I am a pretty outgoing, relatively happy guy, not particularly moody, and I remember thinking I was going to fail as an actor, because everyone seemed to have leather jackets, and smoking and were talking about these horrific things that had happened in their past, and how this well of emotion sits in their belly and that's how they can play these characters. I used to go home thinking, 'Maybe I should go and have some therapy to find some things, maybe I'm covering it up, maybe I'm not really happy. This is all [crazy]. Right, okay.' After a couple of months I thought, 'This is absolutely ridiculous, isn't the whole job called acting?' Of course we've all got our demons, but I think the key to everything is being who you are. If there's anything I hope, it's that I appear as I am, because I don't think I have the energy to do otherwise. AGW: Other than the comic book fans, who do you think is the audience for X-2? Hugh: I think there are really strong female characters in this film for girls, I don't think it's just for blokes, I think young kids will like it. Thematically there's some more interesting and intricate things being explored, it's quite an epic scale really that's been written in terms of the pathos of it. I think there's a lot there for everybody. AGW: Was X-2 as much fun to make as it looked? Hugh: Yeah, I would have to say it was more fun than the first for me, because I was pretty scared for about the first month. It took me about a year to admit that I was pretty terrified. But I got cast a week into shooting on the first one, so it was like I was being dragged by a Great Dane. All of a sudden I was in my first Hollywood movie and we're shooting and, bang, we've got this character and we've got to figure it out, and it was a lot of pressure on everybody. So come the second one…time to get in shape. I had time to think about it, work on the script, feel ready to go. We had a four page scene on day one, and I was like, whoa, here we go, and bang we shot it, and every character played in it and we got it, and we were off and running. It was great fun. AGW: When you have to do the part years later, how do you get back into it? Do you go watch the original film? Hugh: I did. We all got together the night before to watch it. My fear was that we would be complacent, like a football team that won fifty to nothing one week and thought they would beat every team. We all worked very hard and it was a surprise hit. I think we were all surprised at the success. So coming into the second one, I was worried about that. And you heard the stories that I used to have cold showers and stuff; so of course being superstitious I had to have them again. Everything I did on the first one, I have to do that for the second one. It actually felt remarkably easy to get straight back into it because I love the character and I really felt on the first one that I kind of got to grips with it, and it's a joy to go back and do it again. AGW: A great deal of this film is yours as Wolverine discovers his past. What was your most difficult scene? Hugh: [gets all serious while eating grapes]. There's one scene where you have a flashback of a nightmare of Wolverine's, and in the script it basically says, 'Flashbacks of nightmare of being worked on.' And I remember going to Bryan and I said, 'Bryan, this is one of those unique opportunities where you can see the making of a character.' It's that moment where Wolverine becomes who he is now, with all that rage, you see why he's got it. And people under extreme circumstances they either fold, or they're brought to life, which is where Wolverine was really created in terms of his heart. So we ended up shooting quite a lot on that, and there was pretty intense emotional stuff in this, which I think was really great to explore. Not only Wolverine's origins but also the whole stuff with Jean Gray, and it was hard but I loved it. That's what I mean about this character being something you don't normally get - you get a little more meat on the bone. AGW: With the come-back of the film musical, are you just dying now to jump in and do a musical on screen? Hugh: (brightening) I can't wait. I've been trying to do it for ages. AGW: Is it true that you passed on Chicago? Hugh: They talked to me about it, yeah. I don't like to talk about that. I'm sure 600 actors passed on Wolverine, or were up for it, so I think it's a bit unfair, but they talked to me about it but it just didn't work out. It wasn't quite right. But I loved the film and I thought it was just fantastic and a brilliant piece of filmmaking. I'm so thrilled that it did so well. I'm going on Broadway in about six months and I'll be there a for a year, so in the next eighteen months I'll be tied up, so let's hope there is not four or five really bad musicals coming out, which will put it to bed for another twenty years. But I don't think so, I think people have wisened up to the fact that a good musical is fantastic, and it doesn't matter if it's on film, on stage, it can work. Unfortunately, if it's bad I think it stinks higher than almost anything, so we'll see. AGW: Some of your fellow X-Men actors will go on to play other comic book characters. Would you? Hugh: Wow. I have had some inquiries about it. I'm not a comic book aficionado so it would have to be something pretty amazing. However, I'm doing Van Helsing. That's not a comic book but if you look in terms of the people who are into comic books, they're all into Van Helsing. There's all those monsters, it has that same kind of folklore and fan base. People follow the Werewolf and Frankenstein and Dracula. It's slightly different to comic books, but I loved the script of Van Helsing, so that's why I went into that.
Hugh: I kept trying to rewrite to get more in there. That stuff in the mansion - I loved all that stuff. It was great. I liked the whole idea of Wolverine being the babysitter, reluctantly, and having fifty people coming. In this one there were more examples of his berserker rage,which I think was one thing that was missing from the first, and fans said to me a little bit, 'We didn't get to see that berserker rage go mental.' So you certainly got more of it in this one. AGW: Kelly Hu [as Lady Deathstryke] was saying that you really beat her up in your fight scenes. Hugh: Hey, she asked for it man! She literally asked for it. She came at me, 'What are you Aussies, wussies? Come on, give it to me'. I tell you, I've been in a few fights in my time and I don't think I've hit many people harder than I hit Kelly, and she'd be like, 'Come on.' AGW: Did you have any injuries? Hugh: A few bumps and bruises, not much. I got a bit of concussion on one thing, but she's a pro man. If she'd hit me, she would just touch me, and it would look like she'd whacked me, but she's a black belt so she knew how to do it. Me, this is the only black belt that I've got (pulls on his trouser belt). AGW: Was there any fight scene you weren't allowed to do because it was too dangerous? Hugh: There are some things that they just won't let you do. I'm not meant to tell you which parts the doubles do, but there's one scene where he hit the wall so hard, and yes he's got a little pad in his back, but he can't have much and I went up to him afterwards and I said, 'Are you alright?' And he said, 'Yeah, no problem.' And for about a half an hour he was in a daze. I mean I don't know how he wasn't knocked out. So stuff like that, those guys are just mental. I would say I did like 90 percent of it. AGW: Everybody is curious about Wolverine's claws. Sometimes they are computer-generated but what about the ones you wear? Hugh: I've got to tell you about this guy, I love him; he's called Jimmy Claws. That's what he's known as in the industry now. He brings out the claws every day in a mahogany box with a brass plate engraved in calligraphy 'Wolverine,' and he opens it up almost like to this spotlight of music, like King Arthur pulling out Excalibur. And every morning I'd say, 'Thank you Jimmy,' and he'd say, 'Good luck, sir,' and I'd say, 'Thank you,' and I put on my claws and go to fighting. So the claws were there every day, but luckily on this film they decided that if we were fighting and claws were going near our faces, they'd use CGI which was very sweet, well not so much sweet, I think it was probably Kelly's agent hearing how I've maimed a couple of people on the first film. AGW: Tell us about Van Helsing. Is it just as physical a role and are you signed more multiple movies? Hugh: I'm signed for two on Van Helsing. It's probably more physical. There's just a little more action, and there's a lot of stuff, there's horse riding and wirework because I get lifted up, and there are fight sequences, on a huge scale. Wolverine is pretty intense, like that sequence with Kelly Hu took three weeks to shoot, and that was hard work. It was bloody hot and we were sweating and we were taking a few hits here and there, but for me anyway it was essentially on the ground, or whacking into a wall. Some of the stuff in Van Helsing is going to be way up in the sky flying around, so it's a lot of fun. AGW: You don't have those silver knife claws but do you have weapons in it? Hugh: [laughs] There are so many weapons in Van Helsing I've lost count. I'm like one of those watch salesmen, I have this huge overcoat and it's like (opens his jacket), it almost becomes a joke by the end. 'What else have you got in there?' Because I pull out a crossbow, mace - you name it and it comes out. AGW: Do you have any idea why so many talented actors come from Australia and do you know others? Hugh:
We all know each other to a degree. We all get on very well, I know some
of the actors more than others, but you've got to understand that by the
time you see Australian actors they are generally trained. Most actors
train for three years, I trained for four, so perhaps you have a wider
range and you make a lot of your mistakes behind closed doors rather than
in the limelight. I think in America if you've got talent you're snapped
up at sixteen or seventeen, and bang you're already going and there's
no chance for you to grow artistically - very little I think. And then
by the time you guys get to see us hopefully a few of the kinks have gone
out. I think Aussies aren't afraid to have a go, and don't mind making
a little bit of a fool of themselves and maybe that helps in this job. Hugh: I kind of have an interest in it, and was looking at a couple of scripts that didn't come off. If there was a good one - I love a good pirate movie, I love all that old Errol Flynn stuff and I used to do fencing a lot, so I always wanted to do some kind of sword fighting thing. I thought that would be fun. So I wouldn't say no, but I'm not actively grabbing it. AGW: Would you do a third X-Men film? Hugh: I'm pretty sure, yeah. I love it; I can't imagine myself giving it up. |
 
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Okay,
he's hot, all right? I think the multi-talented Hugh Jackman (he sings
up a storm in musical theater too) is one of the most gorgeous, polite,
charming hottie-bodies going in films today. You might have discovered
him as Wolverine in the first X-Men film three years ago. Then
it was on to Someone Like You, Swordfish with Halle and the romantic
Kate and Leopold with Meg Ryan. Now the awesome Aussie is back
in X-2 and much of the storyline revolves around his Wolverine
character who is as angry as Hugh is calm. 
AGW:
Aren't there more action Wolverine scenes in this film than the last?