HUGH JACKMAN BLAST ON LATEST MOVIE ROLE
Aussie actor’s new film is all about turning back the clock but he would much rather focus on the future
THE Covid pandemic has made nostalgia big business as we yearn for our pre-lockdown lives with box sets or old albums on vinyl.
Hugh Jackman’s film Reminiscence, out in cinemas today, sees his character using a machine to help people access their old, lost memories.
The Aussie actor, 52 – who has starred as Wolverine in the X-Men franchise and musicals like The Greatest Showman and Les Miserables – is happy with the here and now but he’d still be tempted to try the machine.
He said: “I am a big believer in the present and I’m very hopeful for the future, but I think I’d definitely use it.”
Despite his charmed Hollywood A-list life, Hugh is no stranger to worry. He has been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma on his nose, a malignant form of cancer, six times and this month had a skin biopsy for a possible cancer scare.
He and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness have talked about their struggles with infertility, miscarriages and IVF, which led to them adopting children, Ava, 14, and Oscar, 21.
Speaking of how many people are reminiscing about their pasts postpandemic, he said: “I think it’s been an incredibly painful time filled with a lot of anxiety, frustration and isolation. And sometimes the idea you could go back, cherry pick your greatest hits of memories and live in those would be super-tempting.
“But in life, unfortunately you have to go through the thorns. You have to do that to create new memories.”
Of course, for the purposes of this interview Hugh does have to go back.
The Sydney-born actor got his big break playing Wolverine in 2000’s X-Men after Scot Dougray Scott had to quit the role. Hugh has never looked
It’s like nothing you have ever seen before HUGH JACKMAN ON NEW FILM REMINISCENCE
back. He appeared as Wolverine in eight movies, the last of which was Logan in 2017 when he put down his iron claws. And while Hugh has had further success in The Prestige, Les Mis and as PT Barnum in 2017’s The Greatest Showman, which is officially the most downloaded movie in the UK, every bit of press for Reminiscence has asked him whether he’d play Wolverine one last time.
“No,” he said firmly, for probably the 100th time this week. “I think I’m done with that. Logan was the end of that story, certainly as far as I’m concerned.”
Staying in the past, is there a memory that Hugh would return to if he had a reminiscence machine in real life?
He said: “Obviously, I would love to go back to when my kids were born and hold them again. I’d love to relive them being really excited when I came home. Those were the days!”
An entertainer in the truest sense of the word, Hugh, who showed his singing prowess at a huge 2019 gig at the SSE Hydro Glasgow, has played superheroes, circus owners and even a monster hunter, in Van Helsing.
In Reminiscence, which he describes as having a “Westworld tone”, he plays Nick Bannister, a private investigator – of minds.
He uses a machine that allows people to relive any memory they desire. His Greatest Showman co-star Rebecca Ferguson arrives as Mae, a client looking for something she has lost, and Nick falls in love.
Then she disappears and he tries to find out what has happened to her in this dark, futuristic world set in a war-torn future where Miami is being slowly flooded due to climate change and everyone lives at night instead of day because of the heat.
The film was directed by Lisa Joy, who created the Westworld series with her husband Jonathan Nolan, and who wrote Reminiscence with Hugh in mind.
He laughed: “In my head I was like, ‘Oh Brad Pitt turned down the part, right?’ I said ‘yes’ before I read the script. It’s a unique and really exciting idea. It’s like nothing you have ever seen.”
There was also a first for Hugh in the movie – filming underwater – in a gymnasium-sized studio filled with water. Hugh said: “We spent a week on the water doing long takes in between pianos and chandeliers. It was a very sort of surreal thing. Stuff I had never done before.”
He was also thrilled to finally act more with Rebecca, who played opera singer Jenny Lind in The Greatest Showman. Hugh said: “We had such a wonderful time together on The Greatest Showman, even though it was a little frustrating because she only had about five scenes.
“It was funny because the first scene that we shot together in this movie was with her on stage singing. I was having deja vu watching it.
“I was so lucky on this because I also got to work with the brilliant Thandiwe Newton. We had a lot of fun together.”
The Greatest Showman was a huge slow-burning success – passed over by critics but loved by audiences who downloaded it in droves and lapped up the music. The soundtrack eventually spent 28 non-consecutive weeks at No1 in the UK album charts
Hugh loves all the songs in the film but said: “My favourite would still have to be This Is Me. I love how it’s become an anthem.”
The actor is happy with the way his life has gone and wouldn’t want to have done anything differently.
He said: “I like to think I give it everything at the time and move on.
“People think I am a bit of a freak because I can walk off stage and be asleep 45 minutes later because I am done and I’ve moved on.
“There are some early television shows that haunt me – guest appearances on Law of the Land and a show called Snowy River that I maybe cringe at a little.” ●Reminiscence is in cinemas now.