USA TODAY International Edition
HUGH JACKMAN REMEMBERS TWO DECADES OF WOLVERINE
Versatile actor retracts his claws for last time in ‘ Logan’
When Hugh Jackman graduated from drama school in Australia, he remembers having chums who were willing to bet money that he’d eventually be James Bond on the big screen. But that he’d play a comic- book tough guy who chomps cigars and sinks his claws into bad guys’ faces? Not so much.
Jackman is the first to concede that Wolverine wasn’t “a breadand-butter role for me. No one was saying, ‘ You’re definitely going to play a dark, brooding sort of antihero.’ ”
The actor, 48, laughs at the memory, yet the character, with his recalcitrant attitude and penchant for violence, has for 17 years fascinated adoring fanboys and Jackman himself.
He’s played Wolverine in nine movies starting with 2000’ s
X- Men, but he’s putting the mutton chops and claws away after one last stand in Logan ( in theaters Friday), the finishing touch on a memorable run.
What sticks out most for Jackman over that time? So many weights lifted and so many chickens eaten getting pumped up to be a superhero icon. The day Jackman got the role in 1999 — when Dougray Scott couldn’t make it work around Mission: Im
possible II. Sitting on a New York fire escape with his wife DeborraLee Furness the Saturday night after X- Men opened in 2000 and
her saying: “I think this is going to change everything.”
He thought about walking away from Wolverine around the release of 2006’ s X- Men: The Last
Stand. “I was worried it was getting limited for me, and directors I wanted to work with were not so interested” in hiring him for non- superhero acting roles, Jackman says, though his fears were quelled when Woody Allen and Darren Aronofsky approached him — for Scoop and The Foun
tain respectively — and not the other way around. Since then, “every time I came back to it, it really felt fun and fresh.”
Logan director James Mangold cast Jackman in 2001’ s Kate & Leopold.
Back then, Jackman was “a wonderful, exuberant, wildly talented and versatile young actor,” Mangold says. “The person I have continued to know is just gaining in confidence and gravity. I don’t see an end for him because we have so few of these masculine figures that can own the screen in a traditional sense but are also full of surprises.”
Jackman’s next role is one his schoolmates would have pegged as more his speed: The song- anddance man is filming P. T. Barnum biopic The Greatest Showman ( in theaters Dec. 25), and his 11- yearold daughter Ava is jazzed. “She’ll tell you, ‘ Hey, Dad, I notice the Wolverines and all that. But that P. T. Barnum, that’s the movie,’ ” Jackman says.
After that, his future is wide open. Logan co- star Patrick Stewart reports that he has a potential theater gig for him. “I cannot tell you what it is, but you will hear it about it when and if happens.”
Jackman says he’s energized about his post- Wolverine period. “It’s the first time in 17 years where I haven’t known there was something on the horizon, and creatively, that’s probably a good thing.”
“We have so few ... masculine figures that can own the screen ... but are also full of surprises.” Director James Mangold