Hugh Jackman reveals the most embarrassing moment of his career
While Hugh Jackman is most likely best known today for playing Wolverine in the X-Men movies, the actor’s filmography also includes impressive performances in the likes of The Prestige, Australia and Les Miserables. Jackman’s oeuvre is varied and shows he is more than just a bulky action man.
However, despite the acclaim and the impressive roles across his career, there are a few things from over the years that Jackman would much rather forget. He once opened up on the most embarrassing moment he has ever experienced as an actor, and, as he professed, it sure is a “doozy”.
“I pissed my pants on stage,” Jackman told Vogue, “It’s the doozy of all doozies”. The unfortunate incident occurred in 1995 when Jackman was performing as the antagonist Gaston in an Australian production of the Disney classic. It was during that time that Jackman also learned how to sing for the first time.
But on the pissing his own pants, Jackman added: “The doctor told me I was dehydrated so, following direction, I drank so much water that by the time I was doing this number – in red tights, as Gaston in Beauty and the Beast – I basically had a choice of pissing my pants or not singing.”
In the end, Jackman went for the former option. Perhaps he felt that he had come too far with his singing lessons not to belt out his best effort, even at the cost of soaking his tights with his own urine. Never mind, Hugh, it happens to the best of it. Jackman also, ahem, opened up on that first experience of singing back in 2017.
He told Playbill: “I came to singing late. When I was doing Beauty and the Beast and in my contract, they made me have a singing lesson every week. What happened was I was learning on the job, and I kind of developed a voice that was not fully mine. [It] really made me fall in love with singing. I find it really difficult to listen to myself sing. I’ll be listening to the Broadway channel sometimes, and they’ll announce me, and I immediately turn it off. But with this, I can actually listen to myself.”
Almost as if to comment on the unfortunate and embarrassing pissing incident, Jackman also told Vogue of his singing: “When it’s all flowing, it’s as free and as exhilarating as anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. And I wish to God I could have it every single time I do it. I don’t, but when that happens, it’s transcendent.”
