Once more unto the breach: Hugh Jackman reprises Wolverine role

HUGH Jackman on living in a superhero’s torso, earning far too much money (but flying economy) and other pitfalls of fame.

Hugh Jackman as Logan in "X-Men: Days of Future Past" (2014) TWAM 140524

SORRY about the beard,” he says, leading me over to a sofa and sitting down next to me.

The beard is small, black and pointy, but not remotely objectionable. I’m not sure I’d have noticed it at all had Jackman not drawn my attention to it, on account of my being principally bedazzled by how handsome he is. He is absurdly handsome. Unnecessarily handsome. Tall and broad, luminous and twinkly; A-list major Hollywood player, box-office-bankable, does it for both the ladies (who want him) and the gentlemen (who want to be him) handsome. But I digress.

“I’m rehearsing Pan – this thing I’m doing with [director] Joe Wright – hence the black beard,” Jackman continues. It’s not part of your ‘look’? “God, no!” He laughs. The crows’ feet around his eyes deepen in a way that makes me think he should get them insured, like Kim Kardashian’s bottom. “I don’t know what my ‘look’ would be. I don’t think I’ve had my own haircut, or facial hair, for maybe 15 years. I can’t remember the last time I went to a barber. Even physically. This…” He waves a hand to indicate his impressively muscled torso, encased in a dark jumper, for which he trains intensely every time he reprises the role of Wolverine, the superhero character who made him famous. I know about the ripped bod because I’ve seen the X-Men film posters, in which he is generally half-naked. “This is not my body!” Jackman says. He seems genuinely detached from the hardened, muscular bulk currently propping his head up, as if it’s a suit he wasn’t sure about and someone else convinced him to wear.

Isn’t that weird? Never looking the way you want to look? Not knowing how you’d look, if you weren’t constantly adhering to the demands of some director? “I love it. Ownership of your hair, or your body, if you’re an actor, is a really dangerous thing. Because the idea of an actor is to get rid of yourself. To be neutral. I’ve seen some actors go, ‘Yeah, but my hair should be like this …’ I always think: ‘Wow,’ ” he says. Are you maybe just more compliant than they are? I venture. “No! I just don’t… care. All that much.”

Jackman says he really does need to get rid of all vestiges of himself to be Wolverine, the man/wolf mutant he’s been playing since 2000, when X-Men director Bryan Singer cast him – at the time, a relative unknown – in the first film in the franchise; and as he’s just done again, for X-Men: Days of Future Past, the fifth instalment in the series. Because you’re not a man/wolf who spontaneously shoots steel claws out of your own fist when riled? “Ha. No. Because he is very different to who I am. Because he’s tortured and muscular, and I’m skinny and really quite labradorish.” He howls, in illustration. “I’m not tortured. He’s so tortured. So tortured! Always on edge. Get him a therapist! Right? It’d be good!” He says he has to take a cold shower on the mornings of every day he films as Wolverine because “that feeling of taking a cold shower first thing in the morning, I equate to how he feels most of the day. Pissed off.”

Jackman’s played other action heroes (the title role in Van Helsing, 2004), and starred in Woody Allen’s Scoop (2006) and Baz Luhrmann’s ­Australia (2008); he’s voiced characters in the hit animations Flushed Away and Happy Feet (both in 2006), and he’s sung, as Jean Valjean in the 2012 movie Les Misérables, which was the only thing he’s had to audition for in quite some time, a part he was – he tells me – terrified he was going to fail at. In fact, he was nominated for an Oscar for that performance.

And he’s returned, time and again, to theatre, which is where he’s most comfortable. “Always have been. It’s more hit-and-miss with film.” What is it about being on stage that makes him comfortable? Does he like people looking at him? “No. You actually just get a run at it. And there is a collective energy. With the audience. Everyone’s in the same thing. I go down and I listen to them gathering in the wings. Always. That sense of excitement. Ah! It’s the night!”

Jackman never expected, or wanted, to be famous. As a teenager he acted “as a hobby”. While studying for a degree in communications at the University of Technology, Sydney, he took a drama course for subsidiary credits, and loved it so much that he enrolled in drama school, from which he graduated at 26. “I did really want to work as an actor. I gave myself five years. I thought, ‘I’m not going to be the last one at the party.’ I thought, ‘I’ll be 31, and if it’s not working out I’ll do something else.’ But fame… I don’t ever remember thinking, ‘I want to be famous.’”

What did you want? “To be able to eat. I was a student for seven years, and I remember thinking, ‘If I ever have money, I’m going to just eat.’ Just to be able to walk in, without looking at the menu in the window. I remember it was basically 120 bucks a week. For everything. My rent was 55 bucks a week. Food was probably 50 bucks. So then I had 15 bucks. But everyone was the same. You have 100 people putting five bucks in for a keg, and we’re fine!”

I wonder if he’s adjusted to the trappings of a celebrity lifestyle, or if it still seems exciting. “Completely! Staying in a place like this? Flying first-class? I still jump up and down on the beds. I go onto a plane, I turn left, I’m like: ‘Yes!’ My mum lived in England when I was growing up…” Jackman’s parents divorced when he was eight. He remained in Australia with his father and two elder brothers; his mum decamped to the UK, where Jackman’s parents originated, with his two sisters. “I can’t tell you how many Garuda flights I took from Sydney to London. They used to call it the international milk run, because it had seven stops. And the first stop from Sydney was Melbourne. You’re an hour in the wrong direction! So, to me, to this day, flying first-class is … It’s insane. Insane.”

Jackman says the fame that Wolverine brought him was a shock at first. (“I describe it at the beginning as a bit like being dragged down the street by a great dane. It’s sort of fun, a little out of control.”) But it was the money that proved more problematic for him. Forbes listed Jackman as worth $55 million in 2013. So that makes you rich, I say. “Yup. Yeah,” he says, very quietly. Is that difficult? Pause. “In the end, I find all that stuff more of a burden than anything. I get so many things given to me. My friends are like, ‘You don’t deserve that! You don’t care about it! You’re getting designer clothes! Someone will let you borrow a car!’ ” You really don’t care? “Not that much.” So you’re in a position where you can buy anything you want, but you don’t really want to buy anything? “Yeah, but I’m married, so that’s OK. Ha ha! Don’t worry! That side of things is covered!” He pauses again. “There is somewhat of a… process for me to go through of me being able to live with money. In a weird way. Of not feeling guilty about it.” Pause. “How to be a parent, with money, is a big one.”

Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness adopted two children after Furness suffered two miscarriages; their son Oscar is now 13, and their daughter Ava is eight. Is the temptation to spoil them rotten? “No! No. For me, it’s more the other way. I fly coach with them. If I’m working, I don’t: I say, ‘Look. It’s my job, and they’re flying us, and that’s why we’re flying first-class.’ But otherwise, I fly coach with them. And I get bothered less in coach, by the way, than I do in first-class. People go, ‘That guy looks like Hugh Jackman!’ But they presume it’s not me. Plus, no one can move.” He mimes being trapped in the narrow confines of an economy seat. “So, everyone goes, ‘Hey! Can I get a photo?’ I go, ‘Yeah! Good luck with that! Good luck with moving your arms. You can try!’ I did hear my son, when he was about six and we were walking down the gangway, saying quite loudly, ‘Is this a private plane?’ Oh, that’s a bit weird. I just gave him an English accent.” He tries again, with an Aussie accent. “‘Is this a private plane?’ I’m like, ‘Aargh! No.’ ” Pause. “High-class problems to have as a parent.”

He moves, smoothly and unprompted, to another interview topic. “But then I sit here and the idea of, ‘I earned this’. No. I can’t… No actor really earns the proceeds we get.” You think you’re overpaid, I say. “Oh, yeah!” The whole damn lot of you? “Yeah! But I understand why, how it’s being measured. As a brand. If we were born 100 years ago, you could be the most famous actor and you wouldn’t get all that. Even 50 years ago. In the studio contract. A lot of those actors died penniless. The studio might put them up in a house ’cos it looked good. But somehow, since the ’80s, this happened.”

He sounds wistful for a time when actors died penniless. I wonder if he thinks that level of money is corrupting. “Ah. I… Nnnoooo. In that… Let’s not call it money. Let’s call it opportunity. All right? So you have a lot more opportunity. So it will make you… more of what you are.” So if you’re corrupt anyway…? “Right. Now, you could say, someone who didn’t have the funds to go off the rails, maybe they’d be better off not having the money. But I’d argue they’ll find a way to go off the rails anyway.”

Has he ever thought he might be in danger of going off the rails? “I don’t really feel that. As an actor, I don’t know if that’s always a positive thing. Some of the really great actors are on that knife-edge. Very instinctive. Don’t have the brakes necessarily, but have this incredible engine and this brain and creativity. And sometimes it can go wrong. Impulsivity is creativity, right? Then all of a sudden, creating an incredible symphony, or writing a script, when there’s nothing in the brain saying: ‘Ah, I don’t know about this,’ or, ‘What will people think?’ But it can be bad when it’s got to do with drugs.”

Jackman doesn’t do drugs. He says his only vice these days is coffee. “It feels so pathetic to say coffee. I was always curious as a youngster. I don’t understand why people say, ‘I never did this! I never did that!’ Because, aren’t you curious? A little bit? But there are diminishing returns for me. Diminishing returns.”

There’s something profoundly domesticated about Jackman. He and his family split their time between homes in New York and Sydney. He and his wife – whom he invokes over and over again, calling her “Deb” as if I know her too – never spend more than a fortnight apart, and “never go to bed on a cross word”, in accordance with rules that Furness implemented very early on in their relationship. “She’d been an actor and had enough relationships and done enough films and seen enough to know. I was like, ‘OK’. I hadn’t worked out any of that shit. I was 26!”

They met in 1995 on the set of the ABC-TV series Correlli, in which she played a prison psychologist and he an inmate. It was Jackman’s first proper screen role; Furness was the star. “She was in every scene, and I would come in and out. I was one of 30 prisoners, right? But the moment I realised I was really falling for her, I was horrified. I was like, ‘Cliché! My first job? The leading lady?’ I thought she was just going to go, ‘Ah! Sweet boy. Get out of here!’ I had no idea it was reciprocated. None.” They married in 1996 after Jackman discovered that Furness did, in fact, reciprocate. What sort of a husband is he? “I think I’m… even. I’m even. I’m quite reliable. I’m…” Out of 10? “I’d say seven. But I hope she’d say nine. Ha ha.”

I ask Jackman how their marriage survives what I imagine to be a decadent, debauched, adultery-inclined mire of Hollywood culture and he tells me that, in fact, divorce statistics are higher for police officers than actors. My boyfriend’s a police officer, I say. “Oh, I’m sorry! But look: I think it’s time away, stress, the opportunity presents itself because you’re away.

“People think, ‘Oh, you’re working with a beautiful actress.’ That’s not it. There is a kind of immediate intimacy you have to have with [an actress] when you’re working with them. Like we’re meeting for an hour, and we’re talking. But I might meet you and we’d be, clothes off.” (Does this count as flirting?) “It’s speed-dating, and you do need to… particularly romantically, you need to have an affection for that person, for it to read on camera. You have to connect. But still, that’s not it. I think it’s… getting used to not dealing with your shit together.”

So it’s not proximity to beautiful actresses that threatens relationships, it’s distance from your spouse? “Exactly. So yes, there are pitfalls in our job, but I don’t know if it’s any harder.”

Do he and Furness operate according to a policy of 100 per cent honesty? “No. Deb says, ‘Do I look fat in this?’ Ha ha ha. I have a little rule. One in 10 times, I may say, ‘Hmmmm…’ Because if you never do it, it’s not convincing. So, one in 10. That’s marriage survival. She’ll say, ‘Do you think I’ve put on weight?’ I’ll say, ‘Maybe a pound?’ In reality it’s five. ‘Ah! You never say that!’ I’ll say, ‘Well, I’m not sure…’ ”

I wonder how Furness feels about the physical transformations he goes through. Does she like his Wolverine body? “She doesn’t really get it. It frustrates her more than anything, because it means I don’t go out for dinner with her. She also says, ‘Your job is not to be ripped with abs. Your job is to be fat and schlubby, so on whatever scale we’re on, I’m in a better position than you; that is your job. To make me feel good.’” He also says that Furness, who is 13 years older than him, “tells everyone I’m 50 already. I’m like, ‘Actually I’m only 45…’ ”

We talk about his children, whether it’s harder to raise a boy or a girl, and he says, “I call my son a thoroughbred. Like, whatever technique I used yesterday doesn’t work today. So you have to be a lot more sensitive. He’s very sensitive, so I have to be. So it’s a parenting challenge. But when it’s all clicking, it’s thrilling. And he was the first. You know? It’s the rule. You always screw up the first one.”

And we talk about his professional nemeses. How many do you have? “None.” Really? “I used to have about 20. Maybe now there are eight.” Care to name names? “Um … Will. Brad. Channing…” He laughs, then admits Matthew McConaughey (the star of numerous rom-coms who has transformed himself into an Oscar-winning actor via a number of smart but risky role choices) has made him a bit jittery. “Because he’s made a really conscious choice to pick great roles, whatever the cost. And we’ve got the same publicist. I found that confronting. And inspiring. Would I do that? Would I be prepared, for three or four years, to not be in the A-list, to take whatever role that is great? Because he’s done it. And it’s paid off.” So would Jackman do that? “I think I would. I wouldn’t be 100 per cent OK with not being in the game anymore. I do like being in the game.”

Every successful actor amasses rumours about his sexuality sooner or later; Jackman’s are, just maybe, especially persistent. He touches on them himself, when he talks about the only time he Googled his own name (while searching for an image he wanted for a poster for his one-man Broadway show in 2011) and: “Boooof! The list of things that came up! Hugh Jackman Career. Hugh Jackman Gay. Family. I was like, ‘Woah! I’m getting out of here!’ ” But he just doesn’t strike me as a man who’s hiding anything. He’s so unedited, so keen to give an accurate account of himself; he keeps apologising because “I feel like I’m not really answering your questions”, when in fact he really is. Ultimately, I suspect much of the gossip is rooted in poisonous amazement that, despite 14 years of top-level fame, Jackman has chosen not to leave the woman he married, before he was famous, for a starlet half his age.

I ask him what it’s like to be absurdly handsome; to be a pin-up. “That’s so not me. No! Come on!” he says. So you don’t accept you’re widely considered to be good-looking, that the X-Men franchise partly sells itself on the considerable merits of your image? “I’ll tell you what: I didn’t get my first Hollywood job till I was 30. So I never experienced that thing, like I see it now. I see people go a bit, ‘Ooooh!’ I see what girls do. And I went through all the years where I really wanted that reaction but wasn’t getting it. Not playing hard to get. Just… not. So I know that if girls now get excited, it’s a combination of: movie star, what I know about him, I saw him in that movie and he had a great body in that movie…”

OK, OK. I get it. Hugh Jackman is (improbably) as well adjusted as he is attractive. But I need to pin him down on this one point. Do you consider yourself handsome? “I think I’m… above average. That’s about as honest an answer as you’ll get.” I’ll take it.