The exact moment Hugh Jackman knew he was meant to be an actor: “This is who I am!”
Everybody knows Hugh Jackman as the actor behind the adamantium-nails superhero Wolverine, smoking cigars, cutting fools short with his claws, and talking in a voice so low it barely registers with the human ear. However, it’s also well-known these days that Jackman loves nothing more than a sing-along.
When Wolverine was first hitting it big in the early 2000s, it wasn’t common knowledge that Jackman came from a musical theatre background. The marketing team at Fox probably didn’t want superhero nerds to find that their new badass leading man had recently been puttering about, belting out showtunes instead of chewing nuts of steel, or whatever their idea of Wolverine’s machismo was.
Times change, however, and now Jackman has embraced both the glittery jacket and grimy tank top sides of his performing persona. Through musical movies like the dreary Les Misérables and the insanely popular The Greatest Showman, he has proven that you can, in fact, have it all. All that singing and dancing doesn’t seem to have harmed the reputation of his sideburns one tiny bit.
Prior to his big screen success in North America, the Australian star was turning heads in theatrical productions all over the world. In his native ‘Down Under’, he originated the roles of Gaston in Beauty and the Beast and Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard in their respective Australian debuts. In 1998, he was nominated for an Olivier award for his portrayal of Curly McLain in the West End revival of Rogers and Hammerstein’s classic western romance drama Oklahoma! Not only was Jackman very good at being on stage, as it turns out, being on stage was also very good for him.
“Onstage, in [The] Boy From Oz, for example, the moment before the applause really exults you when you realise, with complete strangers, that you know each other, completely,” he told Parade, explaining, “It was a moment of honesty. I’d feel as intimate with an audience as with my wife. ‘This is who I am!’ When it happens, it’s thrilling. Sometimes I feel more myself on a stage than I do off the stage.”
The Boy From Oz is a jukebox musical based on the life of songwriter Peter Allen, born in Tenterfield, New South Wales, who cut his teeth in the industry penning chart-topping hits for the likes of Christopher Cross, Elkie Brooks, and Olivia Newton-John, alongside writing and performing his own hit singles. He was married to the great Liza Minelli between 1967 and 1974, which turned out to be a lavender union as he was a closeted homosexual, and one of the first high-profile Australians to be claimed by Aids in 1992.
Jackman played Allen in the 2003 Broadway run of the show. His performance was incredibly well-received, leading to him winning ‘Best Actor in a Musical’ at the 2004 Tony Awards. Interestingly, he was also the host that night, which in turn won him an Emmy for ‘Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Programme’. Basically, The Boy From Oz was a very, very lucrative gig for him.
The movies might be where actors become legends, but the stage offers the purest form of the drug that all applause junkies are hooked on. There’s nothing quite like stepping into a role in front of a live crowd – the kind that laughs with you, gasps at the twists, and feels every moment. Once you’ve experienced that, walking away from it isn’t so easy. Just ask Hugh Jackman.
