Hugh Jackman talks Reminiscence, Australia and the teary, childhood trauma he wants to revisit

Aussie A-lister Hugh Jackman has had a lot of extraordinary experiences in his glittering career, which makes his choice of which day he’d like to relive all the more surprising

If Hugh Jackman was given the chance to live any day over again, he knows exactly which one it would be.

It’s not the Melbourne autumn day just over 25 years ago when he got hitched to long-time wife Deborra-lee Furness, nor one of the milestones in the lives of their two children Oscar and Ava.

Neither it is the day the then-little known actor jagged the role of a lifetime playing Wolverine in the X-Men movies, nor any of his many stage and screen awards and nominations for films and musicals including Les Miserables, The Greatest Showman and the Boy From Oz.

It’s not even the time he soft-shoe shuffled across the stage at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles as host of the 2009 Academy Awards, or the day ten years later when he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia.

Rather, the Aussie A-lister’s do-over day would be March 12, 1977 – the first day of the Centenary Test between Australia and England.

Hugh Jackman in a scene from the sci-fi movie Reminiscence.

“I know exactly what it is,” he confirms via Zoom call from New York. “’77, MCG – my father took me down to the Centenary Test. My brothers as well, we were massive cricket fans and it was a 14-hour Hume Highway drive back then. We drove Friday – my dad gave us Friday off school, which was unheard of.”

In the opening day of one the all-time great Test matches, history records that batsman Rick McCosker famously had his jaw broken and skipper Greg Chappell scored a plucky half century as the Aussie batsmen were skittled for 138, leaving fast bowling great Dennis Lillee just enough to time to terrorise the England openers.

Jackman, however, remembers none of this – he spent most of the day in tears, distraught and dejected, after accidentally wandering out of the stadium while his family furiously searched for him inside.

“I need to go to the toilet maybe 30 minutes in and I inadvertently walk out of the stadium without a ticket,” says Jackman.

“So, I am about eight and I am outside and apparently they are looking for me inside the stadium for hours and I am lost and I am crying.

“As you know, one of the great games of all time and I have zero memory of the cricket – I only remember sitting outside of what is now the Great Southern Stand and crying. So, I want to go back there – I want to see Dennis Lillee rock in, watch Rick McCosker, the whole thing.”

Rebecca Ferguson, Hugh Jackman, Lisa Joy and Thandiwe Newton at the UK premiere of Reminiscence in London last week. Picture: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Warner Bros

Jackman has memories on his mind thanks to his new sci-fi movie, Reminiscence, which is written and directed by Lisa Joy, one of the creators of the hugely successful, mind-bending, Emmy-Award-winning Westworld.

The noirish thriller is set in Miami of the not too distant future, which is partly underwater thanks to rising sea levels, and where environmental degradation have led to an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have nots.

Jackman plays former soldier Nick Bannister, who operates a hi-tech machine that can help clients relive their memories from lost loves to lost keys, and falls for a mysterious femme fatale (played by his Greatest Showman co-star Rebecca Ferguson) setting him on a dangerous journey through the seedy, drug-addled underbelly of the city.

Given the damning IPCC climate report released last week, not to mention the fact that Miami last month announced a plan to build an $8 billion sea wall to combat rising waters, the world created by Joy doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

“The best sci-fi does illuminate things from today and Lisa … has a way of creating these big, poetic, almost dreamlike worlds that are enticing and beautiful and yet there is a dark underbelly,” says Jackman. “That’s what I love about the movie – there is a bittersweet quality throughout the entire thing and whatever you think it’s going to be, the movie surprises you.”

Thandiwe Newton and Hugh Jackman play former comrades turned colleagues in Reminiscence.

Thandiwe Newton, who plays Jackman’s booze-soaked employee and former army comrade, Watts, first crossed paths with Joy and her creative and life partner Jonathan Nolan (the power couple married in 2009 and have two children together) when they cast her as Westworld’s kick-arse android-on-a-mission, Maeve, a role that won her an Emmy in 2018.

She says she was intrigued by Joy’s gritty, reality-based vision of the future and signing up for her first feature as a director was a no-brainer. Newton, who starred in the 2018 Star Wars spin-off movie Solo, says Joy’s lived-in world “where technology and depravity are all kind of mushed up together” has echoes of the one created in George Lucas’ much loved space westerns.

“I don’t know whether it’s just because it’s Lisa’s first movie, but she had the biggest swinging balls of any director ever,” Newton says with a laugh.

“Sci-fi tends to have this notion of everything being pristine and new when in fact there is going to be degeneration of things and a lack of infrastructure as the haves and have nots get further and further apart. Armageddon is way more messy than sci-fi generally shows.”

Westworld creator Lisa Joy on the set of Reminiscence, her first feature film as a director.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his reputation as one of the most inspiring and generous actors in Hollywood, Jackman says he’s “more optimistic than pessimistic” that humanity can avoid the bleak, environmentally compromised future depicted in Reminiscence.

“I am hopeful. By nature, I am quite optimistic but I do get reminded by my kids that our generation has a lot to answer for. Hopefully this new generation really has an urgency to solve a lot of the issues that we are going through.”

Jackman saw the Covid nightmare of 2020 up close from his adopted home of New York, the US city hardest hit by the pandemic. A recent lightning trip back to Australia – complete with hotel quarantine – proved to be a case of deja vu, as his home town of Sydney went into lockdown after months of relative normality. Nevertheless, wherever he is in the world, he’s always looking for ways to take a piece of home with him.

Hugh Jackman’s Instagram post in Sydney’s Roseville on a recent lightning trip to Australia.

“I still follow everything,” he says. “I follow the cricket, I follow the AFL, I follow the rugby. I am obsessively watching Australians, trying to find Australian coverage here in America of the Olympics, I read the papers. So being down there was really great. My timing wasn’t necessarily great and it’s hard to watch what’s going on there, particularly having gone through a lot of it here in America.

“It’s really difficult – it’s been going on for so long and you can feel that weariness and frustration and for a lot of people it’s a really difficult time and so my heart goes out to everyone there.”

And while he’s deep in rehearsal for the lead role in classic musical The Music Man, which is hoped will help kickstart a Broadway revival when it opens later this year, at least he has come creature comforts from Down Under to keep those all-singing, all-dancing energy levels up.

“I am sure that the customs officers as I was coming back into America thought that maybe I was opening my own version of a newsagency or what they would call a candy store here,” he says with a laugh. “There was so much – licorice bullets and Tim Tams and Twisties – you name it. There was a lot of stuff in there. Mainly for my kids of course.”

Reminiscence is released in cinemas (where open) tomorrow.