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confidence quickly.
Even the Hugh Jackman
of that time was worried
about that?
They’re like stepping stones and I’ve seen
people I admire falter. We’re all vulnerable
here. Life is as much a confidence game
as anything.
I thought you were going
to say
Oklahoma!
,
but no,
it was the Oscars.
The greatest stepping stone for me was
—
and I’d never been more scared in my
life — singing the national anthem at an
Australian and New Zealand rugby game.
There were a hundred thousand people...
I’ve seen people boo’d off when they sang
it badly and never work again.
When was this?
July 26, 1996. I’ll never forget it. I had
a panic attack the night before because,
for whatever reason, I was an actor and I
don’t know why I was singing the national
anthem in the first place. I was like: If this
fails, it’s over. It went well, but it could
have gone badly and I could’ve been
boo’d off.
Was
Les Mis
comparable
to the national anthem?
I’m a little more prepared now than I
was 15 years ago. I actually feel like
I know what I’m doing. Now I’m
ready.
What other things
freak you out?
When I was younger I used to be
quite fearful of things that you don’t
want to be fearful of, like heights, as
a kid. Rollercoasters. I was afraid of
the dark probably until I was 13. Those
embarrassing things.
You’re not afraid
to fail.
Right, but it’s from those times. The worst
thing is being scared. I conquered my fear
of everything and now I love it all.
What have you done
with your kids to create a
special bond?
I’m a huge sports fan so when my first
son came, I thought: This is going to be
awesome. Turns out, my son hates sports.
Then I realized that actually, what the gift
of having children is that they come in
with these things, maybe different from
what you’re into, but because you love
them so much and you want to be with
them so much and connect with them,
you do the things they like to do. I found
myself at more museums and looking
through geological books. We dig through
dirt. Check out insects. It’s really about
listening to your kid rather than forcing
them to like the things you like.
Is Wolverine coming
back?
Uh huh, with Jim [Mangold, directing],
straight after
Les Mis
.
Is it going to be a horror
movie in a way?
No. It’s going to be a little darker and I
think, a little truer to the character.
Did it derive from the
Chris Claremont and
Frank Miller mini-series of
the , 80s?
Yes, of the Japanese saga, absolutely. If
you read a lot of that, there’s a lot of it and
it is a little disparate and some of it has
got the X-Men in it. We take license.
Why do you think the
X-Men
movies and the
Wolverine
movies have
done so well commercially
and critically?
When
X-Men
came out it was, trust me,
cold as ice. There was not one comic book
movie out there. Bryan Singer reinvented
it because they’d become cartoonish.
He made you care about the characters
beyond the special effects and made you
kind of relate to these characters. Then
came a little movie called
Spider-Man,
and I think there was that thing of like,
“
This can’t really last,” and so now six
or seven years later [Chris] Nolan comes
out with
Batman
and lo and behold these
movies have not only been commercially
successful but also some of the best-
reviewed movies of all time. Then, finally
Hollywood goes, “Oh, my God, this is a no-
brainer, every comic-book movie is going to
win. Lets dig up everything that we’ve got.”
Why do you still want to
be Wolverine?
I love that character. It was the first film
that I did in the US and somehow I lucked
upon the greatest of all the superhero
roles because, back to your point, he
feels very human, has dilemmas and
demons, and his battles feel more
like they’re human. I don’t feel like
a guy with claws and ridiculous
hair, I feel like a guy battling
against life.
Are you coming
around to an
X-Men
4
or do you think that
moving forward it’s just
going to be Wolverine
on his own?
I don’t see it, yeah. I can only see one
movie ahead, and I’m pretty sure that I’m
well into the second half of this match. I
don’t know exactly when the end is, but I
only go one at a time. If this is the last one,
fingers crossed we’re finally going to get
that hole in one.
You had a great cameo
in
X-Men: First Class
.
Can you see yourself
appearing in a
First Class
part two?
If they come up with as good an idea as
last time I’d say yeah.
“
I’ve seen
people I admire
falther. We’re all
vulnerable here.
Life is as much a
confidence game
as anything”
As Jean Valjean, Hugh carries
out Cosette in Les Misérables
