Hugh Jackman (Charlie Kenton)
is a native of Australia who made his first major U.S. film appearance as
Wolverine in the first installment of the “X-Men” franchise, a role he reprised
in the enormously successful “X2” and “X-Men: The Last Stand” in 2006.
In the fall of 2009, Jackman made a
return to Broadway in the Keith Huff-penned “A Steady Rain.”
On February 22, 2009, Jackman took on
the prestigious role of hosting the 81st Annual Academy Awards live from the
Kodak Theater, he wowed those in attendance and helped ABC score a 13% increase
in viewership from the previous year. Previously, Jackman served as host of the
Tony Awards three years in a row, from 2003-2005, earning an Emmy Award for
his 2004 duties at the 58th annual ceremony and a nomination for his 2005
appearance at the 59th annual ceremony.
In early 2008, Jackman was seen in the
Twentieth Century Fox film “Deception” opposite Ewan McGregor.
In late 2008, Jackman appeared in
Twentieth Century Fox’s romantic action-adventure epic “Australia,” directed by
Baz Luhrmann.
Jackman has also starred in Darren
Aronofsky’s “The Fountain,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige” and Woody
Allen’s “Scoop.” He has lent his voice to the animated features “Happy Feet”
and “Flushed Away.” Other films in which he has had leading roles include
“Someone Like You,” “Swordfish,” “Van Helsing” and “Kate and Leopold,” for
which he received a 2002 Golden Globe nomination.
For his portrayal of the 1970s
singer-songwriter Peter Allen in “The Boy From Oz,” Jackman received the 2004
Tony Award for Best Actor in a musical as well as Drama Desk, Drama League,
Outer Critics Circle and Theatre World awards.
Previous theater credits include
“Carousel” at Carnegie Hall, “Oklahoma!” at the National Theater in London (Olivier
Award nomination), “Sunset Boulevard” (for which he won a Mo Award, Australia’s
Tony Award) and Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” (Mo Award nomination).
Q: Your character, Charlie, has a tough
relationship with his son, Max. Being a dad yourself, was that hard to play?
A: After
a few days of shooting, Shawn [Levy] pulled Dakota and me aside. He said, “Look,
Dakota, you’re obviously a very well brought up, polite kid. And Hugh, you like children. Both of you need
to stop it immediately.” After that, there were several times after Shawn
called, “Cut!” that I’d see Dakota look over at his mom like he was going to get
in trouble. It was kind of like, “They told me to say this, mom, so it’s okay.”
It obviously went against the grain for him to talk to me the way he did.
Having said that, I do have two children
and there are times when you want to say things that you’re not allowed to say.
It was nice to be able to let it rip for three months. It was good therapy.
Q: Have your kids seen the movie?
A: Yes,
they love the movie. It’s the first one of my movies they’ve seen. If you think
about it, there hasn’t been anything else that’s really appropriate for them,
apart from a couple of animated movies I’ve done. They can’t wait to see it
again. They really got into the story of the robots. They were cheering for
them and I saw both of them getting a tear in their eye. My mother-in-law was
at the same screening and she was crying too.
Q: Would you like to
have a robot at home?
A: I’d
love to have a robot at home. I tried to smuggle one off the set, but it was difficult.
They’re very heavy and hard to put in the trunk of the car.
Q: Do you choose roles with your children
in mind?
A: Not
really. It’s icing on the cake when they can watch it and love it. My kids are
not that interested in my movie career, by the way. My son in particular just
wants to be with his dad and never talks about it. It was great to sit and
watch “Real Steel” with all three generations and see them love the movie.
Q: What is your character, Charlie’s,
biggest flaw in “Real Steel”?
A: My
character, Charlie, is impulsive, but I’m not like that. As my wife says, I’m a
Libra and I’m just an even-Steven. I don’t really understand the lure of gambling.
I don’t understand working hard for your money and then just giving it away. That’s
just not my personality. Even when I was younger, if I’d go out with my mates
and we’d go drinking, I’d be four or five drinks in and say, “Time to stop. Diminishing
returns.” All of my mates would say,
“Come on!” but I just never really had it in me, which I’m actually kind of grateful
for. Ironically, my wife is just like Charlie.
Q: What is your biggest flaw in real life?
A: If
you ask my wife, my biggest flaw is my inability around the house. She likes to
say that the only thing handy about me is that I’m close by. I also have a
terrible memory and I’m bad at saying no. I often double book.
Q: Did you impart any acting wisdom to
Dakota?
A: I
really thought I was going to have to do a lot more with Dakota, but Shawn is a
master of directing younger actors. He’s done it before and he has four kids
himself. He really mentored Dakota, and there were things that I did, too, from
the very beginning. I wanted to give him the feeling, very quickly, of, “Hey,
this is your set as much as it is mine and we’re in this together. There’s no
delineation of power here. We’re all actors.” Dakota caught onto that. I kept
telling him that he was doing everything right and I always asked him what he
thought of a scene when we were done shooting it. We also did quite a bit of improvisation,
even if it was a bad idea, and Shawn would encourage him too. It kind of gave
him the feeling that he wasn’t “the kid” on set.
The other thing was that Shawn and I really
played with Dakota. We didn’t want him to feel an adult/child vibe because
that’s not the dynamic in the movie. I would play practical jokes on him all
the time and we just knocked around. We hung out on weekends.
Q: Did you learn anything from Dakota?
A: I
always learn from child actors. They’re a great reminder of the simplicity of
acting. As you get older, you can sometimes complicate things a little more. You
can become too aware and start to think, “This is the scene emotionally and
this is what I have to do. Okay, we've got the climax coming up….” You can
start to analyze it too much. Kids are happy just to be and to listen. They
have a real natural ability just to listen. Dakota is a very natural actor. It
was easy to be in scenes with him.
Q: This is the second time you've worked
with Kevin Durand, correct?
A: Yes.
We were both on Broadway at about the same time and we met there. We’re kind of
kindred spirits and he’s a great friend. I think he’s one of the most
underrated, talented actors in Hollywood. People haven’t even begun to see the
extent of what he can do. He took a character in “Real Steel” that could have
been kind of uninteresting and made it very memorable. I’m happy to be in any
movie with him.
Q: Is it in your
contract that you have to take your shirt off in every film?
A: It’s
funny, because when I started filming “Real Steel” everyone was asking me if it
was in my contract to take off my shirt and it really took me aback. I told
Shawn I didn’t want to do it and he agreed. He said, “This movie isn’t going to
be about that,” and then we never thought about it again. But there’s a scene
in the script where Charlie changes his shirt in the boxing ring and he does it
because all of his clothes are in his bag and he’s living out of his truck. He
has no bedroom, no house, no anything. We thought that was a great story point,
so it turned out that I had to take my shirt off.
Q: Talk
about your workout regimen for this film.
A: I was already doing a movie called “Sumo”
with Lee Daniels and had put on a lot of weight for that. Then it got canceled
about three months before we started “Real Steel,” so I was big, I was
overweight. I called Shawn up and said, “My weight is going to work for this
film, too, right? I’m playing an ex-boxer and you need to believe that he could
have been in the ring.” Shawn said, “That’s a brilliant idea. In that first
scene, when you fall out of bed, you’ll have a paunch and it will immediately
signal to people that you’re not Wolverine. I love it. It's going to be
perfect.”
I came in for the fitting a month before
the film started and I was twenty pounds heavier than I ended up being in the
movie. It’s not easy for me to be that way, but I was eating a lot and pushing
a lot of weight. Low reps, heavy weights. I hadn’t told the costumer that I was
coming in heavier, so it was literally like I was putting on my son’s clothing.
I could barely put the jeans on. I remember Shawn saying, “This is just too
much. Let’s pull back on the realism.”
Q: Is
there a difference in your approach to theater and film work?
A: Not really. As an actor, you have many
tools—your body, your voice, your emotions, your mentality. If you’re performing
in front of twenty-five hundred people, you need to get to the person in the
back. There’s a mental process to that. On film, you’re going to make
everything quieter. Your eyes are very important because they communicate your
thought process. In fact, in film, what you don’t say is more important than
what you do say. That’s not so much the case onstage. I’m forever grateful that
I did theater first. I think it’s much easier to distill the technique from
theater than to say, “Oh, let’s just add water to film.” There are definitely
muscles that you need on the stage that you don't develop in film.
Having said that, if you haven’t done your
work as an actor and you don’t know what's going on internally for the
character you’re playing onstage, particularly if it’s a musical, and there’s
no real thought behind the song, no one will feel anything.
REAL STEEL is available on Blu-ray and DVD now - Order your copy today!
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