The Hollywood icon Christopher Nolan called a “very talented actor”
Having recently completed one of cinema’s most prestigious hattricks by winning ‘Best Director’ for a movie that won ‘Best Picture’ and was anchored by a turn that scooped ‘Best Actor’, Christopher Nolan knows what it takes to oversee a formidable performance.
That’s been par for the course since the beginning of his career, of course, with the filmmaker steering Guy Pearce to one of his best-ever outings in Memento and leading Robin Williams down a path towards villainy in Insomnia. He also convinced Leonardo DiCaprio to be the focal point of his one and only effects-heavy blockbuster action movie to date, Inception.
Throw in his fruitful recurring partnerships with Cillian Murphy, Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, and lucky charm Michael Caine. It’s clear Nolan has a keen eye for not just hiring the biggest and brightest stars in Hollywood on a regular basis but casting them as characters that fit them like a glove.
After announcing his arrival as somebody equally adept at working in the studio system with a massive budget in tow on Batman Begins, Nolan opted to follow it up with a complete change of pace. Going back to basics, he crafted the smaller-scale, labyrinthine thriller The Prestige, which lived and died on the strength of its two central performances.
For a talent as versatile as Bale, such a complicated character and nuanced performance was to be expected. Still, the opposite number, Hugh Jackman, hadn’t really been tested to the same extent before. Obviously, he was a certified A-lister as the X-Men franchise’s Wolverine, but the gig that turned him into a household name had largely defined his career up until that point.
Between his debut in the first X-Men and The Prestige, he’d appeared in eight features, which included two superhero sequels, high concept fantasy Van Helsing, techno-thriller Swordfish, and Woody Allen’s Scoop. The closest he’d come to breaking out of his wheelhouse was Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, a nobly intentioned misfire that tanked at the box office and split opinion down the middle. It wasn’t quite on the same level.
Nolan knew exactly why he wanted Jackman for The Prestige, though, explaining to Empire that “there’s a great depth to this guy as an actor”.
Not only that, but he believed his film would have a transformative effect on his career: “I think if Bryan Singer had seen The Prestige before making the first X-Men, he’d never have thought of Hugh for Wolverine.” That’s a bold claim, but in a backhanded assessment of his filmography up to that point, Nolan stated that “he’s a very, very talented actor, I think much more than his other films have shown.”
Naturally, Nolan was shown to be correct as Jackman began branching out to display his range in projects well beyond the borders of the comic book adaptation, earning an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win in the bargain. The Prestige showcased that there were many more strings to his bow than simply mutton chops and mutants.
