Hugh packing a punch

Hugh Jackman trained with a boxing great to prepare for his new movie as JAMES WIGNEY reports

Hugh Jackman

Hugh Jackman trained with a boxing great to prepare for his new movie as JAMES WIGNEY reports

TO HIS legions of fans around the world, Hugh Jackman is the Wolverine, the romantic heartthrob from movies such as Australia, a song and dance man or simply the sexiest man alive.

But to his nearest and dearest, those accolades and high-profile roles do not mean a lot.

"I have been in a couple of animated movies but apart from that most of my movies don't really help me at home," the Aussie A-lister says of his two children Oscar, 11, and Ava, 6. "For them to see their father slicing people's heads off does not give me a lot of credibility when I am telling them not to beat each other up."

Given that most of Jackman's roles have come in more mature-age fare such as the X-Men films, The Prestige and The Fountain, it is not surprising his turn as Roddy the rat in the animated Flushed Away ranks among Oscar's favourites.

Jackman thought that his new film, Real Steel, might be the one to turn that around, as a film to appeal to all ages and one of the first he was comfortable taking them to see.

But despite the giant billboards around the family's adopted city of New York, the children remain unmoved.

"They don't talk to me about it at all," he says. "Even when they saw this movie, which they loved, either they are not genuinely interested in my character or my performance but they really don't like talking about it.

"They much prefer keeping me as 'my dad', I think."

Real Steel, billed as "Transformers meets Rocky" is a sci-fi-action-drama set in the near future, when robots have replaced humans in the boxing ring to satisfy an ever more rapacious desire for carnage.

Jackman plays a selfish, down-on-his-luck former boxer, who tours America trying to earn money putting his machines in dodgy underground bouts.

His world is turned upside when the son he barely knows - and cares about less - is lumped with him, leading to some unexpectedly tender moments of father-son drama.

"That's exactly what my wife said," Jackman says of the movie's emotional punch. "She kind of elbowed me in the ribs and said, 'I thought you said it was a robot boxing movie'."

To prepare for the role, Jackman trained with boxing great Sugar Ray Leonard, who won titles in five different weight divisions and is widely regarded as one of the best fighters ever.

To Jackman, who trains at a New York gym he says is "full of yuppies", that was impressive enough, but to his father it was a career highlight.

Jackman's parents divorced when he was eight and Hugh and his four siblings were raised on Sydney's North Shore by their father, Chris.

But it wasn't until he was a teenager that Jackman discovered his accountant dad was a former army boxing champion.

"He never talked to me about it and I didn't find out until I was a teenager because he thought me and my brother were going to beat each other up and that would glorify it somehow," Jackman says.

"When I told him about this (training with Leonard) his eyes really lit up and I could see that look in his eye like, 'Wow, my son has really made it'."

Sports fan Jackman - who will be cheering for his beloved Manly Sea Eagles in today's NRL Grand Final - also professes to be a boxing lover, even more so from his experiences with Leonard.

"And the more I am into it, the more I see what a great test it is," he says. "I suppose you could see it as barbaric and I kind of follow the theory of (American philosopher) Joseph Campbell that it's somehow there in our DNA. It's violent - but it's a ritualised, legal form of violence and a hell of a lot better than going to war with people.

"But ultimately it's the greatest test of the mental, physical and emotional limits of mankind."

 Real Steel is not the first time his career has been influenced by the so-called "sweet science".

 In his breakout role as the steel-clawed mutant Wolverine in the X-Men films and their spin-offs, Jackman used to watch and emulate the brutal Mike Tyson.

"Sugar Ray was quick and had panache and flair whereas I always saw Wolverine as a bar brawler or a street fighter," he says.

Jackman famously bulks up to play Wolverine with a punishing training schedule and an astonishing food intake that transforms what he says is a naturally skinny physique into 189cm of pure muscle.

He will do so again when the second Wolverine spin-off begins filming in Japan in mid-2012.

For Real Steel he gained 10kg to acquire the body that would befit an ex-boxer.

Or so he thought.

"When I turned up at the costume fitting a month before shooting, 10kg overweight, the director who thought it was a good idea had changed his mind," he says, ruefully. "So it was straight on the rowing machine, which is for me the best way to lose weight."

Before he dons the steel claws again, Jackman will return to his musical roots.

After appearing in school musicals, many of his early acting forays were in musical theatre.

After appearing in the short-lived ABC drama Correlli, where he met his wife Deborra-lee Furness, Jackman appeared on stage in Beauty and the Beast, Sunset Boulevard and then an acclaimed turn on London's West End as Curly in Oklahoma! He played Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz on Broadway in 2003-04 and returns to the Great White Way later this month with a show featuring some of his favourite musical numbers.

He hopes to bring the show to Australia, too.

Next January he starts rehearsals with The King's Speech director Tom Hooper for a big screen version of Les Miserables, which he first saw in Sydney in the late '80s and fell in love with.

"The music is incredible, the story, the characters," he says. "Tom Hooper is such a great director so I am very excited."

Extra tantalising for Australian audiences is the prospect of Jackman playing Jean Valjean opposite the man he replaced in Australia, Russell Crowe, who will play his nemesis Javert.

"He will bring such depth and strength," says Jackman. "It's a formidable role and few actors could pull it off. And I know he is one."

 Real Steel opens on Thursday.